The expansion of the hotel and tourism industry in Dubai. By Océanne RAVET

The Burj-al-Arab hotel

Dubai, which covers 4000 km² (three times smaller than the Île-de-France area) has more than one hundred 5 star hotels (eighth position in the 2015 trivago.fr “world city with the most 5 star hotels” rankings). It has more than three hundred hotels in all categories.

Dubai is famous for its excessiveness: the Burj-al-Arab hotel, for example, is a self-proclaimed “7 star” hotel, based on an artificial island. It is 321 meters tall! The website hotel.com notes that their cheapest rooms cost €1800 a night...

Dubai is also about tourism: 13.2 million tourists in 2014, up 8.2% in a year, according to the Emirates Tourism Department. This expansion can be explained by, of course, the luxury of the city, but also, in the context of Middle East instability, the fact that Dubai offers relative security for tourists and businessmen. Dubai hopes to welcome more than 20 million foreign tourists to the 2020 World Fair it is organizing.

But, does all this excess hide a more sinister side? Michel Duchaine, a social activist, considers Dubai a city “of sexual and employee slavery". He has collected damning testimonies from numerous Pakistanis who left their country to live their "Emirates dream" (the United Arab Emirates has one of the highest immigration rates in the world). Once immigrants arrive at the airport, the Emirati take their passports, and then make them do menial jobs (even if they are skilled workers) for very low wages (€2,85 a day) in extremely poor conditions (50°C in the shade…). Their activities outside work are also controlled. humanite.fr lists the numerous suicides and rapes of these foreign workers. This modern slavery is the hidden side of the city…

As a hotel manager, I would refuse to use slave labour. A luxury hotel can be run without mistreatment of its employees...

Océanne would like to work in the hotel industry.