MyBayCity.com Advertising Representative Visits Dubai, United Arab Emirates
January 27, 2007
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MBC ad rep Jim Hollerbach is dressed as a sheikh and Estelle Lamb a burkah-clad Arab woman as they pose in Dubai with Estelle's daughter, Jennifer Grant, left.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article proves that MyBayCity.com will go anywhere for a story.)
How did a ramshackle fishing village on a brackish creek on the Persian Gulf become a phenomenally successful world business center? That's the story of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, told this month in National Geographic and now being experienced by visitors from Bay City.
The magazine rhapsodized about the "glittering excess" created by Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed al Maktoum, who in 1959 borrowed millions from Kuwait to dredge the creek and install docks and wharves for world trade. His son Mohammed now rules the empire that prompted a Saudi journalist's comment: "Dubai is putting pressure on the rest of the Arab and Muslim world. People are beginning to ask their governments: 'If Dubai can do it, why can't we?'" Of course, Iraq would be the most extravagant comparison.
Jim Hollerbach, MyBayCity.com advertising representative, is visiting one of the world's hot spots, Dubai, with friend Estelle Lamb of Bay City.
Estelle's daughter Jennifer Grant lives in Dubai with her husband, John, a manager for General Motors in the Middle East and Africa.
The couple stopped in Paris for a business meeting on the way to Dubai and reported the French capital a lively place as usual. Yes, the Eiffel Tower is still there but the Hemingway Bar was closed until the sun went down.
About Dubai, Hollerbach says: "Great place, but it's not as nice as Bay City. They have snow in a man made mountain. I miss the four seasons here. The temperature has been in the 80s, but it gets real chilly at night when the sun goes down. It was hovering near 68 tonight. I had to put on a long sleeved shirt.
"We are going to the camel races in a day or two. I am also going to see Tiger Woods play at the Emirates Golf Club."
Hollerbach said Dubai has one-third of the world's cranes building skyscrapers there. "There are about 60 or 70 under construction; two are going to be over 180 stories tall." That becomes even more amazing when compared to Michigan skyscrapers like those 26 stories high on I-75 at Big Beaver in Troy, he said.
Again, "Nat Geo" comments: "With its Manhattan-style skyline, world-class art and colossal, duty-free shopping malls, little Dubai now attracts more tourists than the whole of India, more shipping vessels than Singapore, and more foreign capital than many European countries. Its economic growth rate, 16 percent, is nearly double that of China."
The entire Emirates coastline is a Free Trade Zone and duty free with only a five percent import tax. One requirement is that businesses operating there be 51 percent Arab owned, an issue that did not arise prominently during the controversy last year in the U.S. about doing business with Dubai Ports World.###
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