Dubailand Theme Parks

Dubai will Survive Global Financial Crisis: Tatweer

“It is a cautious time, no doubt. You got to have your eyes open. But I am very opimistic that we’ll come out of this winning. Dubai will come out way ahead of everyone else through this,” said Sharaf who oversees a significant portfolio under Tatweer Investments including real estate developer Mizin, Food and Beverage Company, Dubai Mercantile Exchange and several other IP-driven businesses.Sharaf is also the Chairman of Dubai Mercantile Exchange and serves as a Member of the Audit Committee for Dubai Holding.“The challenges that we have will be similar to any other investor globally,” he said referring to the massive declines in stock markets at home and abroad and a worsening global credit crunch that has started to hurt locally as well.“But having said that, I am very positive with the opportunities that lay forth for Tatweer,” he said.He said recent launches for Tatweer’s property projects, lead by Mizin, have shown that investors were still very much interested in owning Dubai assets.“On the issue of global crisis, cash crunch and so forth, whether the other parts of the economy will respond as robustly as they have in the past. I’ll say not necessarily. They may not.“But some of our offerings people can’t ignore. Like Mizin’s mid-market real estate segment offering like Remraam. That’s something missing from the equation right now. They can’t ignore that. And we see now today the trade in the secondary market for Remraam is very strong.”Remraam residential community, part of the 3 billion square feet Dubailand entertainment and leisure project, will eventually offer a total of 11,778 affordable yet luxurious apartment units in 198 buildings.The 23.5 million sq ft project will be located in the heart of Dubailand, next to Global Village and the famed Bawadi Boulevard.Sharaf said the Dubailand project, nearly the size of Singapore, was progressing at a fast pace and apart from having theme parks by major brands like Universal Studios, Legoland, Marvel and Six Flags would house about 1.5 million residents.“Parts of Dubailand will soon be up and running and you will start seeing a sizeable residential population in 2010.”Dubailand, is seen as probably the most ambitious project to be taken up by Dubai Inc, so far. Touted as Dubai’s own Disneyland, the project is likely to create as many as 300,000 jobs.“Our bsuiness model is surrounded around the fact that you have land as your asset and we have to turn that land into something profitable. To build a business around it and also to provide an opportunity for investors to make some money.“What we bring to the table is the thinking, the strategic part of it, the master planning, the content, the administration, the planning and so forth and boom. You set it out, the initial infrastructure into it, the investors come in, they have to buy into the vision and participate in the vision. And so the cycle starts with that. That’s fundamentally how our business works.”What it does do is that it drives the tourists to come to Dubai and to stay not the 2.5 days that they normally stay but to actually extend it to 4.5-5 days which is good for the economy.Sharaf said the Dubailand vision is to drive up the number of tourists from an average of 7 million a year to about 15 million by 2025.Dubailand will be fed and facilitated by the under construction Jebel Ali Airport, supposedly the world’s largest, and the half a billion square-feet Industrial City which will cater to the small and medium manufacturing and services business that we grow around the Dubailand project.“Dubailand will drive tourists to come to Dubai and to stay not the 2.5 days that they normally stay but to actually extend it to 4.5-5 days. Collarly to that is the number of hotel rooms that needs to be available for these tourists.”Sharaf said Dubailand by 2015 will host some 60,000 hotel rooms, almost double the number of 35,000 rooms now available in the whole of Dubai.

Dubai will Survive Global Financial Crisis: Tatweer

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