The Petroleum Institute

Proposal Report
COMM151

RQ: What are the challenges of the tourism in the UAE? How to overcome them?

UAE Tourism Team

Table of Contents:

Subtitle

Page #

Introduction .3 Literature Review 4 Purpose ..11 Method ..12 Schedule 13 Budget ...14 Conclusion 15 References .16 Appendix ...17

Date: 27th/ Feb/2012 To: Mrs. Mary Hatakka From: UAE Tourism Team Subject: Proposal Report

Introduction: What is the meaning of tourism? Tourism is outlined as a composite of activities and services that delivers a travel experience to individuals and groups traveling from their homes for purposes of pleasure"[1]. Tourism is important for any country as a result of it brings in a exceedingly lot of individuals who are willing to pay money for get hold of things that is different and found in that country therefore it ends up in a much better economy. Our research question is what are the challenges of tourism in UAE and how to overcome them? . We believe that our team is capable of taking such a research topic because all of our team members are locals, and every one among us has a lot of helpful information concerning Emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, RAK and Fujairah. Beside that we tend to are travel throughout the spring break, which might be very effective for our research especially when it involves the analysis matrix, in alternative words we tend to might place these visits into use. The great issue regarding our analysis topic is that it doesnt have a robust reference to science, in contrast to several alternative advised topics which could not be as enjoyable and entertaining as this one as a result of their association to deep science. When speaking regarding tourism, all what individuals believe has an

excellent and enjoyable time away of labor stress and pressure; therefore this analysis will be enjoyable and entertaining for us too. Literature Review: This is where we start gathering our information to build up a strong base or background about our research topic. In this section, we view the sources we have read and seen with a critical analysis and evaluation for each source. This is to keep the client on line with every step we make even before beginning our research. In source [2] The author talks about the tourism in the Middle East and how influents the economy, however this articles focus on UAE primly Abu Dhabi.UAE was established in the second of December in 19971 and Abu Dhabi is the capital of UAE besides is the biggest emirate of the seven emirates. The article states that tourism plays an affective economic role as a development rod from which economic benefits such as income and employment. Furthermore to improve tourism must construct more vacation destinations like hotels with more activities, events and exhibition in Abu Dhabi. This article address a specific issue that is how to develop the tourism in Abu Dhabi and the purpose is well stated and the information have some figures to support the issue. The author makes clarification about some ideas In source [3] the authors talks about Dubai and how attract a lot of tourist. Dubai is the most known city in the gulf for tourist to visit and have a lot of attraction places like hotels, malls and beaches. In 2010 there were over 940 million international tourist arrivals, with a growth of 6.6% as compared to 2009[3].

The largely income for Dubai city came from tourism. At this point there are 555 hotels of different types in Dubai of that62 belong to five star classes. In 2011, around 159 conferences and exhibitions were held in Dubai of that just about 79 were held in the Dubai World Trade Center and 15 were held in DICC. This year there have been 19 cultural and festival shows in Dubai. There are 43 shopping centers in Dubai. There are over 63 overland safari corporations operating in Dubai. Moreover the region accounted for 66 sporting events including camel and horse racing. The tourism business in Dubai faces the challenge of increasing price of its hotels. Dubai additionally faces competition from less costly destinations like Lebanon and Egypt. Dubai's attraction as a tourist destination might decrease on account of high prices particularly for travelers who come back beside the complete family. Population growth and increasing tourism business could upset the fragile ecological balance of the region which might cause increased erosion of coastlines and pollution. At the same time it's important to purpose that legislation exists in safe protected zones. In addition road traffic has increased exponentially resulting in congestion and atmospheric pollution. Ras Al Khaima, a Rising Emirate[4]. This is often the title of an internet site which has everything to be visited, seen, or known by tourists who return to RAK (Ras Al Khaima). The web site has been printed to offer the guests a full background concerning the simplest places town has. RAK, collectively of the promising Emirates within the UAE, is going to begin a brand new dawn underneath the leadership of H.H. Sheikh Saud bin Saqer Al Qasemi on the sphere of tourism, attempting to increase its name to compete with Abu Dhabi or Dubai. though RAK features a a lot of completely different stylein terms of tourism, it's still neglected by most of the UAE guests, as they visit Abu Dhabi,
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or Dubai principally, that are the cities of looking and fashionable life. On the opposite hand, RAK is that the town for fans of untamed or higher described as recreational activities lovers. Having several places for such activities, like Awafi, Ice Land, and Mountains climbing sites it's solely a matter of your time for RAK to shine on the recreational activities field. Its additionally been called the Capital of Heritage. In a trial to draw tourists, the positioning has highlighted the intense angles of the town, whereas keeping all the shortcomings below the shadow, just like the slender and chaotic roads, as several roads in RAK are crammed with holes and fractures that causes the vehicle to continuously shake on the road, t he lack of looking malls is another purpose kept below the shadow furthermore. Currently the town has solely 2 looking malls; therefore it wont satisfy those that like looking, the positioning never mentions this. However, these issues are being solved as you browse this, however the disadvantages ought to even be mentioned on the web site to avoid complains and disturbance for the tourists. The web site has conjointly been biased against the reality and history of RAK because the Capital of Heritage, and therefore the which means here, is that the individuals of RAK are therefore modest and easy, and most of them are locals, whereas the positioning says that drinking alcohol is allowed in RAK even for Muslims. Whereas this can be a reality, it's conjointly reflecting the alternative nature of Islam that disallows alcohol drinking, it wasnt necessary to say Muslims here and pollute their name. The web site conjointly mentions that theres no bound dress code in RAK: The individuals in Ras Al Khaimah are fashionable and liberal. There aren't any rules or rules on the dress code to be followed by tourists. However, modest and moral dressing is predicted from guests as a show of respect to the native voters and their culture.[4] The web site didnt
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mention that some places like the famous Al Manar Mall enforces the modest and moral dress. the web site is clearly telling the guests come to RAK, that is strongly connected to the key question. the knowledge provided is well organized and sorted out, however it's not therefore correct, which is for neglecting some facts concerning the Emirate. The ideas are clear. The web site assumes that the individuals are going to be utterly happy, because the town is prepared to just accept guests, that arent utterly true. RAK still wants some development, like fixing roads, increasing hotels and resorts, increasing looking malls to assure the satisfaction of all tastes, I trust the web site that RAK is that the most satisfying destination for recreational activities lovers. RAK is additional known by the those who live here because the town of simplicity, that the web site ought to have shown RAK because it is quite than attempting to indicate the few luxurious locations and places. I liked concerning the positioning everything that was mentioned relating to the recreational activities, for its utterly true and honest in that. This electronic document [5] is speaking generally about the tourism in the Arab countries, after the incident of 11/September/2001. The Muslim tourists faced some difficulties and different treatment in the US. Naturally many of them have changed their tourism destination to other places; this has raised a new kind of challenge and race between Arab countries. Today, these Arab countries, led by the UAE, are achieving pleasing results, by attracting not only Muslim and Arab tourists, but also European tourists and visitors as well. The authors discussed the relationship between tourism, and terrorism, they also spoke about the strategies followed by Arab countries to enhance tourism in the Arab world. The key question here is: How the incident of 11/11/2001 did affected the tourism in the
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Arab world? The most important part for us here is in page 21, six rows starting from the bottom of the first column, where is speaks about the UAE, leading other Arab countries on this field, while Qatar and Oman were outmatched. The conclusion pointed out that the Arab world has actually been affected by what happened in the US, Washington, but not all Arab countries managed to overcome this new challenge. The reader needs to know about the incident of 11/11/2001, and how improved are some Arab countries which has an important role in pushing them against the tourism challenges. The authors focused on the tourism in the Middle Eastern countries, as they led all other Arab countries on this field. This document is fairly related to our project subject, as it locates the UAEs ranking among other Arab countries on the field of tourism. The document addressed the issue of the Arab countries reaction after 11/11/2001. The author was fairly clear and unbiased, spoke generally about the Arab world, and focused on the Middle Eastern countries at most parts. The purpose was well stated, and it was relevant to the key question. The information provided are satisfying and well organized. The conclusion stated clearly that most of the Arab countries are not taking the challenges of tourism as they should. Source [6] explains and shows many things about Fujairah such as talking about the nature of Fujairah and how Fujairah will develop tourism. First of all, Fujairah is located in the east coast of the UAE. Source [6] mentioned that the mountains in Fujairah are very close to the sandy beaches, which gives Fujairah an advantage in attracting tourists. Additionally, for unexpected number of tourists Mina Al Fajer in Fujairah will be managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts and will consist of a marina, 48 mountain villas, 13 solarium villas, and 80 marina apartments, in addition to a 200 room five star
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hotel. On the other hand the government developed the way from Dubai to Fujairah by creating new highway. It is a 45Km road costing an estimated 1.12bn [6]. Moreover, the main purpose of this article is to find information that will help in the research, for example, what the government of Fujairah will work to develop tourism and what are the future plans. Additionally, there is much information in this article but the most important information is that Fujairah includes a special place in that the mountains are very close to the sandy beaches. In the last part of this article the government of Fujairah promises to develop and improve the tourism. The article includes many ideas but the most important idea is how will the government of Fujairah develop and improve the tourism in the future and what will they build? On the other hand, the author assumes that the government of Fujairah makes new programs, and builds something interesting for the tours, that will effect on the economics of Fujairah. These things that the article mentioned will help in the research to find how to develop and improve the tourism in the UAE. The article answers a specific research question as it explains how they will create new programs to attract the tourists. Additionally the research question is clear which is about the tourism and how to find new methods to develop the tourism. Furthermore, the purpose of this article is obvious and clear which is about developing tourism. On the other hand, this article is connected with evidence and experience such as there are some people from the government who say that the tourism will be improved. The information are organized point by point and the author explains each point. The author assumes that if the government of Fujairah develops the tourism, the sector of economics will rise.

In source [7], the writer described in detail what event tourism? What are its advantages and disadvantages? He explained how events and the tourism sector are strongly related. The article stated that event tourism is counted as a new field in tourism that did not exist before the 1980s. The writer of the article believes that it is a very rapidly growing sector that benefits the economy and the host country of the event. The article is divided into several sections and some of them are the destination perspective on event tourism, an event centric perspective on event tourism and event tourism in the research literature. In this source the writer mainly discussed the strong connection between events that are held and tourism in a country or place or a specific destination. The event develops agency stated that events are a great attraction to people and specially tourists. The main question that organizers face when they are planning an event is where the event will take place. The organizers try to find an attractive place to encourage people to visit the event. This is when events and tourism merge. The organizers may ask tourism consultants about the best places, timings and seasons the event can take place in. So in this way both the tourism sector will benefit as well as the organizers from any specific event. To sum up, the article discussed in detail everything about the topic of event tourism. The writer discussed the topic in a very clear and simple way and in the same time he included lots of important information in the article that is very useful for doing research in this field. Additionally, the author well stated the purpose of the article which was to show the strong relation and connection between events that get held and between the tourism sector and how they complete each other. On the other hand, the author in this article briefly discussed alternative points of view but he considered them in the article.

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After I read the article in my opinion, it includes important and useful information on event tourism and on tourism generally. Purpose: Our research will aim at producing a list of recommendations derived from our studies about the tourism in our nation. The UAE is known as one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In order to maintain this, the country must preserve its income resources. Tourism is one of the leading income sources in the UAE, it is expected that the UAE tourism income will become 171 billion AED in 2016 according to Al-Ittihad newspaper [8]. We as locals are living to serve our nation by any means. And through our studies we are hoping to accomplish our countrys goals by maintaining tourism at its upmost state. Of course we are just researchers but our recommendations list will be helpful to whom concerned. The satisfaction and pleasure of our tourists is our priority for it is the key to the success in the tourism sector. We will cover the shortcomings of tourism in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras Al Khaima, and Fujairah, because these are the rising Emirates in the tourism sector, and therefore they are representing the main destinations of the UAE visitors. We have excluded Sharjah, Umm Al Quwain, and Ajman because these Emirates are more residential than touring, and because the lack of our team members. Another reason is that none of our team members is familiar with one of these cities. The research will deal with the ways of treating the tourists, so we could make them feel like home, and clarifying the places where they should go while staying in UAE for all kinds of recreational activities, festivals, shopping malls, and events. We will try to find solutions of improving these factors and overcoming the challenges which will pop up by time, people need to come and see different things every day, so they are not expecting to
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revisit the UAE in the future to find the same places as they are. Although we have many, the UAE should focus on increasing hotels and residential facilities for tourists as well. Method: Our data gathering instruments will vary depending on the information we are required to gather, we will certainly use surveys and interviews for tourists and visitors. We will also try to interview one of the officials in the tourism sector such as the directors and the executives of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority for example. Well need to interview and make a field study in the country we are visiting during the spring break (Probably Thailand or Lebanon); this should be useful for filling the evaluation matrix. The field study in the UAE will be done by visiting a few areas which attract tourists in the UAE and noting down some notes about them. On the other hand, the external field study will be conducted later in the spring break, but its results will only be added in the first report draft. As other tourists, we shall visit some locations which attract tourists in the visited country and compare the results with the internal field study results in an evaluation matrix. We could survey or interview during the field study if we needed deeper information. Surveys will serve for gathering the quantitative data, while interviews will help us gaining qualitative data, field study will mostly gather qualitative data, but it could also help in getting some quantitative data. Of course the main answer we are trying to obtain through the research is a qualitative set of data, but the quantitative data will take the role of the base data here which we will use to strengthen our results and evidences. We will also rely on our background from the literature review. We will survey and interview tourists in the some touring locations from Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras Al Khaima, and Fujairah. For a topic like Tourism, we believe that these data gathering
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instruments are the most suitable, besides being the fastest and the most efficient methods for that purpose. Schedule: Our planned schedule will start from week 5 of the semester. We spent the first four weeks in forming the team, deciding our topic, reading and analyzing sources, and collecting a general idea about the nature of this course. We have approximately ten deliverables to submit beside the seminar individual writings, and we will give our best efforts to get the highest possible quality. The most important thing we will aim at is getting our work done before the deadlines. In some circumstances, we will need to extend the deadline due to mid-term and common exams of other courses, in these urgent cases, we will ask for a deadline extension from the client, giving our reasons and excuses. Still, we will try to avoid that as much as possible with effective time management, or by letting one of our members who will not have any exam in the same period complete and review the works of the other members, by that we will be able to cover each of our teammates responsibilities in their busy time. However, this will not be applicable during the surveying/interviewing period (data collection). Thats because these methods of data collecting require the attendance and the freedom of the surveyed or interviewee people. That can be avoided as much as possible by taking an early appointment from them if possible, especially for the interviews. Yet, we dont really know what will occur and whether their schedules will change by that time or not, but if we had to cancel the interview, we will gather extra information from the surveys and the field study to eliminate the lack of data. Please refer to the Gantt chart in the appendix for precise details. We will make two field studies: one is in the country and the other is
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outside the country. We will conduct the internal field study during the data collection week, but if we have to conduct an external field study, it will be during the spring break. The results of the external field study will be added in the first draft, and thats because the spring break is coming after the data collection and analysis period. These latter gathered data will also be analyzed during the spring break. Budget: Our team has only three members who have the experience needed on the tourism sector. Tourism is our specialization and therefore we will satisfy our client. The total cost is 12,800 Dhs according to the table: Expenses Salary per hour Description We are three members who are going to cover a wide topic, our total work time is 95 hours; 50 Dhs per hour. Flight Packages Including tickets, and hotel reservation for one week. One package to Beirut (2500 Dhs) and another package to Bangkok (4500 Dhs) Transportation Telecommunication Car fuel and Taxi fees Phone credit, BlackBerry service, and Internet. Stationary Papers, pens, and printing Ink. 250 Dhs 300 Dhs 500 Dhs 7,000 Dhs Cost 4,750 Dhs

Total Cost

12,800 Dhs

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Conclusion: In conclusion, in this report we summarized the main important aspects of our proposal in a direct and understandable way. Before proceeding with our project we made sure to ask and take our clients approval to continue.

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References: [1] Pileus Project What is Tourism? Pileus Project. [Online]. Available: http://www.pileus.msu.edu/tourism/tourism_whatistourism.htm. [Accessed: Feb. 26,2012] [2] Richard Sharpley, "The challenges of economic diversification through tourism: the case of Abu Dhabi," vol. 7, p. 15, Feb. 2012. [Online]. Available: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jtr.378/abstract. [Accessed Feb. 27, 2012]. [3] B Rajesh Kumar, "Tourism in Dubai: The Sunrise Sector," vol. 7, no. 15, p. 28, Feb. 2012. [Online]. Available: www.mejb.com/upgrade_flash/February2012/Tourism.htm. [Accessed Feb. 27, 2012] [4] Ras Al Khaima, a Rising Emirate, rasalkhaimahtourism.com[Online]. Available: http://www.rasalkhaimahtourism.com/default.aspx. [Accessed: Feb. 17, 2012] [5] Ala Al Hamarneh & Chritian Steiner, Islamic Tourism: Rethinking the Strategies of Tourism Development in the Arab World After September 11, 2001, [Online]. Available: http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/steinec/Publikationen/hamarnehsteiner_islamic-tourism2004.pdf. [Accessed: Feb. 17, 2012] [6] AME info: The Ultimate Middle East Business Resource Fujairah targets tourism for growth, AME info. [Online]. Available: http://www.ameinfo.com/135934more1.html. [Accessed: Feb.18.2012]

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[7] SciVerse Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research SciVerse. [online]. available: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517707001719 [Accessed:Feb.18.2012] [8] Mahmoud Al Hadari, 171 2116 111

6117 Al-Ittihad Newspaper Website Arabic. [Online]. Available:

Appendix: Check the MS Excel File for the Gantt Chart

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