The World's Largest Leisure Park And It's Not in America

16 August 2007

Earlier this year the Dubai Municipality approved 16 master plans for what is being billed as the world’s most ambitious family entertainment destination. The sheer scale of building projects in Dubai keeps it constantly in the media, but Dubailand is pretty big, even by their standards.

Dubailand is effectively a collection of entertainment and leisure destinations, including, it is rumoured, some major American brands. And it is being done on an unprecedented scale. Some three billon square feet of development is planned. That’s about 278 sq km (107 sq mi) making it twice the size of all of the Disneyland/Disneyworld resorts on the planet put together. By way of comparison, the whole borough of Blackpool covers about one eighth of the area of Dubailand.

Famous British names are represented too, construction has already begun for the Academies area in Dubai Sports City, which includes the Manchester United Soccer Schools facility and the ICC Global Cricket Academy.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report predicts attendance at leisure parks in Europe, the Middle East and Africa will grow from 131 million visitors in 2004 to 147 million in 2009, a 12 per cent increase. Clearly Dubai is looking to attract a significant share of those visitors; the goal of the project is to attract 15 million tourists every year.

The destination is expected to cost AED 235 billion (GBP 32.5 billion) and the developers project a population of 2.5 million people, which will include tourists, workers and residents, once fully operational.

The first of four phases of development will be completed early in 2008. Since original plans were launched in 2003, the developers have increased the scope of the project by some 50%, extending the time scale. Completion of the final phase is now targeted for some time between 2015 and 2018. But Dubailand is seen by its designers as a city and therefore like a city they expect it to continue to grow and develop well beyond the four phase plan.

Dubai seems to have been successful in its transition from an almost entirely oil-based economy a few decades ago, with the city now relying on oil for only 3% of its revenue. When Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum (the father of the current ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed) decided to widen Dubai's creek in the late 1950s, it was a massive construction project, and everybody asked how the project could be justified.

His philosophy was simple, 'build it and they will come'. The expansion of the creek resulted in the creation of the hugh Jebel Ali Port in 1975, which massively boosted the economy. Dubai's continuing growth seems to provide full justification for that philosophy, which is turning itself into a self-fulfilling prophesy.

For more information on Dubailand, visit www.dubailand.ae