These are UK-based tour operators and specialist travel agencies offering holidays, tours and travel to Dubai. |
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| Amoun Travel |
020 7402 3100 |
Middle East specialist offering tailor-made travel & tours in Dubai and neighbouring Emirates. |
| Ampersand Travel |
020 7289 6100 |
India specialists offering two-centre holidays combining Dubai with India or Sri Lanka. |
| Anenome Holidays |
020 8889 9207 |
Resort stays in Dubai. |
| Destinology |
0800 072 2227 |
Long-haul luxury holiday specialist. |
| DreamDubai |
0800 856 0324 |
One of the many sub-brands of DreamTicket.com, aka Selsdon Travel. A wide selection of flight/hotel combinations. |
| Dubai Holidays |
020 8340 7612 |
Dubai City breaks, luxury resorts and weddings/honeymoons. Also add-on holidays to Oman & Maldives. Dubai Holidays is a brand of the long-standing Cyprus-specialist, Cyplon. |
| Experience Dubai |
0208 786 3092 |
Specialist brand from Barwell Leisure offering luxury hotels and resorts in Dubai, 4 x 4 desert experiences, golf, fishing, etc. |
| Exsus Travel |
020 7292 5060 |
Luxury tailor-made holidays in Dubai |
| Faraway Holidays |
0870 270 1421 |
Online agency launched Aug 06 to offer tailor-made long-haul holidays. Bookings are taken through a call centre and their claim is that at least one of the sales team has been to every destination their portfolio. Faraway Holidays is part of the Travelzest online travel group. |
| Gateway Holidays |
0871 222 8397 |
Resort holidays at a selection of around eight 4/5-star hotels. Gateway is the online manifestation of Indian Sub-Continent specialist, Somak Holidays. |
| Go Dubai |
0800 980 7089 |
A good range of hotels, resorts and activities in Dubai and its neighbouring emirates. |
| Gulf Connections |
08700 270 777 |
Tailor-made packages to Dubai. |
| Hidden Retreats |
0161 926 9262 |
Fronted by TV presenter, Eamonn Holmes, HR specialise in luxurious and exotic resorts and hotels worldwide, and since Dubai has more of them than most.... |
| Key2Dubai |
020 7749 3603 |
Wide range of resorts and excursions for tailor-made travellers, luxury holiday packages, and two-centre holidays combining Dubai with other destinations in the India Ocean and further afield. |
| Kuoni |
01306 747002 |
A comprehensive range of around thirty hotels and resorts from the desert to the beach for everyone from golfers, to families, to honeymooners. |
| Letsgo2 |
020 8329 2724 |
Flight & hotel combinations. |
| Libra Holidays |
0871 226 0446 |
Beach resort holidays in Dubai (good selection of hotels in Jumeirah & the Sheraton Dubai Creek in Dubai City) with all the optional activities and excursions. |
| Odyssey Experience, The |
01242 224482 |
Odyssey Experience (aka Arabian Odyssey) offer tailor-made holidays for independent travellers and have a range of week-long exploratory tours and safaris for small groups exploring Dubai and neighbouring emirates and states- Fujairah, Musandam, Shajah, Abu Dhabi, Oman, etc. |
| Silverbird |
020 8875 9090 |
Tailor-made travel to Dubai. |
| Sunset Faraway |
020 7498 9922 |
Comprehensive coverage of Dubai's mid-range & luxury beach, city & desert/mountain resorts. They also organise weddings in Dubai. |
| Tana Travel |
01789 414200 |
 Tana have a 5 day/4 night round trip adventure in 4 wheel drive vehicles, travelling 750 kilometres through the seven emirates forming the UAE. Guests have the option of testing their own limits by navigating and driving their own vehicles on- and off-road through rugged desert, mountain and rocky wadi and gravel terrain or of participating in the comfort of a vehicle driven by an experienced safari/guide driver. |
| Thomson Worldwide |
0870 160 7438 |
Thomson have quite a large programme of holidays to Dubai (built partly on the Tropical Places programme to Dubai which they bought a while ago) featuring almost thirty hotels & resorts. There is also THG Holidays, a Thomson budget brand. |
| Tradewinds |
0870 751 0003 |
Tradewinds have brought out a dedicated brochure for Dubai this season (2005). Before Dubai had been included in their Indian Ocean programme. That said, there are still lots of two-centre holidays combining the islands of the Indian Ocean with luxury resort hotels in Dubai. |
| Travel 2 |
0870 155 0066 |
Sightseeing, city and beach hotels & resorts. Travel 2 do not sell direct, only through travel agents. |
| Travel Dubai |
0870 748 7474 |
Dubai-specialist brand (part of ATC) offering a wide selection of hotels and activities. |
| Travelpack |
0870 121 2050 |
Travelpack offer tailormade visits to all the classic resort hotels, Burj al Arab, Jumeirah Beach, Royal Mirage, etc. |
| Tropical Locations |
020 7229 9199 |
Tailormade holidays based around luxury hotels and resorts. |
| Tropical Sky |
0870 9079 605 |
Specialist long-haul operator offering luxury resort-stays in Dubai and neighbouring Emirates. |
| Virgin Holidays |
0871 222 0307 |
Virgin are expanding their programme of Dubai flights and holidays, and have now (Jan 06) published their first dedicated brochure of featuring city stays in Dubai City and resort stays in and around Jumeirah Beach. They also highlight twin & multi centre holidays with Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Thailand and the Maldives. |
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| Research Tips: | * | See also Golf tour operators |
| * | Dubai has a host of grand civil engineering/tourism projects underway that will come to fruition over the next few years, and which will make it an extraordinary place to visit...
- The Palm. Confusing name; there are actually three 'Palms' planned. They are the world's largest man-made islands, each shaped like rounded palm trees and built several miles out into the warm waters of the gulf. Jumeirah, the first, is nearing completion and will be mainly private homes - no doubt, some rentable; Jebel Ali will be twice as large as Jumeirah when completed in late 2007, and will be more open to the public with hotels and entertainment. These two 'Palms' will between them add 75 miles to Dubai's coastline and house some 60 hotels and over 9,000 residential properties, shopping malls, theme parks, etc. The most recently announced 'Palm' is Diera. It will be the largest of the three palm islands covering 14km (8.4 miles) in length and 8.5km (5.1 miles) in width. It will consist of residential property, marinas, shopping malls, sports facilities, and clubs.
- The World is a set 300 man-made islands laid out to resemble a map of the world (it'll make addresses easy to work out). Some islands will be private. Others will have hotels and other developments on them. The islands will be ready to start building on in 2008.
- Hydropolis may not be the world's first underwater hotel, but it certainly the first serious one of any scale. When it opens in 2007 it'll offer 200 suites with views of the seabed at 20 metres depth. (see Holiday Ideas).
- Dubai Festival City A huge development covering 1,600 acres with hotels & golf courses.
- Dubailand. Six theme parks, a zoo, water park, hotels, all on a huge scale.
- Burj Dubai. Everyone knows the graceful form of the huge Burj al Arab hotel towering over the beach at Jumeirah on its own island... well this one is nothing like that! 'Burj' means tower and this one, when it is built in 2008/9 it will be the world's tallest building by a long way. How tall? Well they are not saying because the world's would-be tallest building developers like to keep topping each other (currently it's the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan, with 101 floors) but the guess is that it will be somewhere around 800-900metres/189 floors.
In addition to these there are an number of other commercial projects including International City - a residential & tourist complex expected to be completed in 2006; Dubai Pearl - offices, hotels, shops, restaurants and an opera house; Dubai Marina - with a seven mile promenade of restaurants, hotels, entertainments, shops, etc; and Crystal Dome - a proposal to build the world's largest building with hotels, conference facilities, homes, offices, shops, restaurants, etc.
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| * | Another project which is due to open soon but perhaps doesn't qualify as a 'major' civil engineering project, is Ski Dubai an indoor ski station with five trails up to 400m long and with a vertical drop of 60m for skiers and snowboarders. When the temperature outside is +40C, it'll undoubtably be one of the 'coolest' places in town. Due to be completed later this year (Sept 2005), Ski Dubai will be part of the huge new Mall of the Emirates complex. |
| * | The Emirates airline group announced in May 2005 that it is planning to build another of the world's tallest hotels. The building will be erected on a site close to the Burj Dubai and when completed in 2008 it will be 350 metres (1150 feet) high, with 560 rooms and 112 suites. |
| * | So what exactly is Dubai? Is it a country? What is the UAE? It does confuse a lot of people. The United Arab Emirates is a 'constitutional federation' of seven emirates. They are: Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Sharjah, Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Qaiwain. Each emirate has its own ruler and together, as the Supreme Council, the seven rulers govern the UAE which is treated as a state with its own president (one of their number). |
