My middle name starts with a C, which makes my initials GCC. It just so happens that last week I was in a GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) country. I was in Abu Dhabi and Dubai for a conference hosted by a global real estate organization I joined this year. I have been very impressed by the quality of people who are part of GRI and the events they have put on.
It’s my third time in the United Arab Emirates and each time it’s more exciting to feel the incredible energy and optimism there. The leadership is exceptionally forward thinking, enlightened, pro-business, and very focused on maintaining social stability and a high quality of life and satisfaction for its people. Add to this that Abu Dhabi is considered the safest city in the world and there is no homelessness and visible drug problems, one can feel an immediate contrast with most large western cities.
Our first presentation was carried out by representatives of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a government agency focused on helping businesses open on two islands within Abu Dhabi by offering networking resources, access to expertise and labor, and a zero tax rate environment, as well as being under the jurisdiction of a common law legal system. One of the speakers said that he never locks his apartment and leaves his keys in his car because Abu Dhabi is so safe. If this isn’t a testament to the safety of Abu Dhabi, I don’t know what is.
Here he is in the middle of his presentation, showing a slide conveying the attributes that make Abu Dhabi such a great place to do business.
We stayed at The Four Seasons where the conference was held, which I highly recommend as the service was outstanding. We brought our tennis rackets with us and we were able to play the first two days we were there. There are courts across the street which was an unexpected surprise. Rather than taking the convenient road, the first day we decided to be a bit more exploratory and took a trek to the Zayed Sports City where they hold the Mabadala WTA tournament, which is a professional women’s tennis tournament. There are multiple courts there but after getting there and checking in the woman behind the desk asked if we wanted to play on the stadium court. We couldn’t say yes fast enough. This is us on the court.
As we were trying to find the tennis courts in the sports city, we saw that there was a bowling complex there as well, which is something we like to do, although it doesn’t happen often. After tennis, we decided to go partake, and we had a good time. Here is a picture of me after bowling with Heather.
We couldn’t be in the Gulf without having a Middle Eastern meal. Here is a glimpse of the amazing bread they served.
I’m a big fan of Joe & The Juice, and fortunately, there was one at the mall connected to the hotel.
Here is how a cappuccino is presented at a cafe at the mall.
The conference had some speakers, breakout sessions focused on particular topics, networking breaks, and a few field trips. This speaker spoke about the ever-growing trend of location-based entertainment and experiences.
One of the concepts he talked about was one that we visited in Abu Dhabi, which is TeamLab, a Japanese-owned company that provides highly immersive digital experiences. It was pretty impressive, as well as highly profitable, according to the speaker.
One of the field trips was to the offices of property developer Aldar, the company responsible for Saddiyat Grove, a very impressive master planned, mixed use community that will house 40,000 people when completed, as well as offices, hotels, retail, recreation, and one of the most impressive clusters of museums in the world with the backing from the government of $6 billion. These include the Louvre, a natural history museum, and a Guggenheim that is under construction and is designed by Frank Gehry.
This is the CEO of Aldar, along with one of his top development executives, discussing the massive project.
Here is the model of the development with The Louvre and Guggenheim in the foreground. The Louvre is the cylindrical building in the upper left.
This is a drive-by photo of the Guggenheim under construction.
On the last day we visited an Equinix data center and one of the developments of Dubai’s largest homebuilder, Emaar.
I was shocked to learn that Equinix has over 97% of the world’s internet traffic flow through its data centers. I read a lot about data centers but had never visited one until this trip. It was extremely impressive. Their data centers are built for resilience and 99.999% reliability, which means that they should have no more than five minutes of downtime over an entire year.
Emaar has a tremendous number of communities under construction, and yet the demand seems to be endless from people around the world seeking to have a stake in the safety and reliability of the UAE.
This photo shows an Emaar executive demonstrating that Dubai offers far more value than New York City, London, and Singapore.
Emmar provided us with a very nice lunch.
This is the community where the presentation and lunch were held.
The contrast between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is striking in terms of development. We were given a tour of a housing development in Dubai by the CEO of the firm that is also about to break ground on a project in Abu Dhabi. He said that there are 580 projects in some form of development in Dubai and only 60 in Abu Dhabi. He believes that Abu Dhabi also offers better value for people looking to rent their homes or buildings as the price to buy is approximately 60% to 70% of Dubai while rental rates are approximately 80% of Dubai’s rents. I personally like Abu Dhabi more and feel like it has excellent long-term investment potential given the virtually guaranteed strong population growth, all of its tremendous attributes, continued investment in infrastructure, and the fact that it has some of the largest pools of investment capital in the world via ADIA, Mubadala, ADIC, and the Abu Dhabi Pension Fund.
On our last day in Abu Dhabi, it was Heather’s birthday, and The Four Seasons did an incredible job of celebrating it and making her feel special. The following pictures show everything they did for her.
Each morning when we came to breakfast, the host welcomed us by calling us Mr. and Mrs. Carmell, and he knew what type of coffee and juice we wanted. On her birthday, he and our server presented Heather with these pancakes.
Later in the day, they delivered this beautiful and very tasty birthday cake.
And, finally, they capped it off with these beautiful flowers.
Given that Heather’s birthday occurred the day before we had to fly to London, the enjoyment of the flowers fell to another lucky person.
After London, hopefully we will return back to the United States without any issues as the curtailment of air traffic due to the government shutdown is not supposed to impact international flights. It’s a stark reminder of the difference between the dysfunction that can arise when a messy democracy is the governing system over a very large country like the United States and the effectiveness of an enlightened leader, with tremendous power who is responsible for a much smaller area and population. In the former you get the asinine government shutdown that should never happen, while in the latter it engenders confidence and security knowing that such lunacy can never happen in the UAE. This naturally adds to its predictability and attractiveness for business and capital operating here and incredibly enticing for others to move to this part of the world. There’s no homeless, incredible speed in getting things done, a frontier spirit and can-do attitude, and a feeling that the sky is the limit.
My optimism about this area is such that if a graduating college student interested in real estate asked me for career advice, I would strongly encourage him or her to go to Abu Dhabi (my preference) or Dubai as the ability to learn and grow and gain incredible experience offers incredible upside and very limited downside from my perspective. After five years there a hardworking, enterprising young person should be able to have a great experiential base,a large number of relationships, potential capital contacts, all of which could be very valuable if he or she wanted to return to the United States.
Take it from GCC, go visit the GCC when you have the time and you’re so inclined.
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