The end of frictionless Dubai

What happens when a city built on travel stops traveling

Read in browser

Welcome back to Pursuits Weekly, our look at the world's biggest culture stories, as well as ideas and recommendations around travel, dining and art. Sign up here to get this newsletter every Saturday in your inbox. Desert, deserted Urs Fischer's iconic Lamp/Bear at an uncharacteristically deserted Hamad Airport in Doha. Photographer: Karim Jaafar/Getty Images It would be facile but not entirely untrue to say that the Gulf's major airports are to international travel what the Strait of Hormuz is to the oil trade. Dubai has more international traffic than any other airport, and almost 20 million international visitors spent at least one night in Dubai last year, making it the world's fifth most popular destination. That's three times as many international visitors as New York City, the most popular destination in the US. Now, as Richard Frost and Mary Hui detail, hard power has intruded on what had previously been embraced as a frictionless and borderless zone. Other destinations are suffering too. The list includes not only everywhere in the Gulf but also Mexico, following a wave of unrest that broke out after the death of a major cartel leader; Cuba, which is under an oil blockade; and much of the rest of South America as well. To complicate matters, higher oil prices mean that jet fuel costs are spiking, which is almost certain to mean more expensive plane tickets, especially on US carriers, which tend to hedge their fuel costs much less than their European counterparts. Meanwhile, news reports of three-hour-long lines to get through security in Houston and New Orleans will only serve to further discourage would-be travelers. And while so far there's been no Iranian retaliation on US soil or toward US airlines, when you start a war with a state sponsor of terrorism, that's always going to be a risk. Not a view anybody particularly wants to see from the first-class lounge at Dubai airport. Photographer: Altaf Qadri/AP There have already been significant changes to the global route map. Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi are all major airline hubs. Rivals including Lufthansa, which has hubs in Frankfurt and Munich, are scrambling to take advantage of the spike in demand for alternative routes to cities including Singapore and Cape Town. This week's pilots strike at the airline, which resulted in almost half of its flights being canceled, shows that's not going to be easy. As Andrea Felsted reports, none of this is going to stop the rich from going on vacation: They're "prepared to spend whatever it takes to have that special experience or pampered moment." The price-sensitive middle classes, however, are another thing entirely. For Europeans and Americans alike, the number of reasons to get on a plane this summer is shrinking fast. Unless, that is, they're heading to Seoul in homage to KPop Demon Hunters, "the travel catalyst that nobody saw coming." By the numbers What medicine looks like in England. Photographer: Emli Bendixen for Bloomberg Businessweek 30% The estimated rise in vasectomies during the first two days of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, according to a 2017 study by Athena Health, as discovered by Gabriel Baumgaertner. What better way to spend two days of bed rest than to watch as many as 32 basketball games? A 2018 study published in Urology confirmed the reality of "Vas Madness." 5.5 million The number of social prescriptions made by family doctors in the UK over the past five years. Andrew Dickson went fishing with a man with PTSD and another with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and hypertension, in a session that cost about £160 ($212) per patient. $600 million The potential sale price of InterPositive, Ben Affleck's AI moviemaking company. Now part of Netflix, it has only 16 employees, according to Variety. It's not just Noma Activists protested the Noma LA pop-up before René Redzepi resigned. Photographer: Sarah Reingewirtz/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images "If someone was this violent and assaulted you in any other space outside a kitchen, you would be in jail. I'm saying this as a lawyer." Kate Krader writes: Star chef Asma Khan of Darjeeling Express was a lawyer before she started cooking, and she minced no words when she appeared on a Bloomberg Women's Community panel in London on Thursday. Noma, Khan said, "is just the tip of the iceberg. There's still a lot of abuse in kitchens." Judy Joo, who is an Iron Chef UK, agreed. "Noma is not an outlier," she said. "I cut my teeth in three-star kitchens. They're highly abusive, verbally and physically." Two weeks ago, René Redzepi and his restaurant, Noma, were most often associated with the term "world's best restaurant. Now, following 18 million visits and counting to noma-abuse.com and a bombshell exposé by the New York Times detailing accusations that included punching employees and other violent behavior, Redzepi has resigned from his position. He also offered an apology that read in part, "Although I don't recognize all details in these stories, I can see enough of my past behavior reflected in them to understand that my actions were harmful to people who worked with me." Bloomberg Opinion columnist Howard Chua-Eoan writes that while apologies are one thing, "making up for a mistake is tougher." He adds, "It's got to be done, even if it takes a lifetime." Radić gets his Pritzker The Teatro Regional del Biobío, in Concepción, Chile. Photographer: Cristobal Palma Chilean architect Smiljan Radić Clarke has won architecture's highest honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize. He's designed some of Chile's most important cultural landmarks, including the Teatro Regional del Biobío in Concepción, where, Kriston Capps writes, he "created a dramatic steel structural skeleton and wrapped it with a transparent membrane, filtering light by day and turning the building into a lantern along the Bíobío River by night." The global Oscars It Was Just an Accident had a particularly arduous journey to the Oscars ceremony in LA on Sunday. Source: NEON Director Jafar Panahi met screenwriter Mehdi Mahmoudian while they were both held in Iran's notorious Evin Prison. Mahmoudian has spent 9 of the past 16 years in prison. Panahi will return next week to face a one-year sentence for creating antigovernment propaganda. First, however, he will attend the Oscars. It Was Just an Accident, the movie Panahi made with Mahmoudian, has been nominated for the best international feature award. "I cannot be so selfish to say goodbye all of a sudden and leave," he tells Madison Darbyshire. The Oscars are a global phenomenon, and Marc Perrier, a Canadian, faithfully watches them, no matter the time zone, every year. "Since 2016 my Oscar parties have taken place in South London, in the dead of night and the chill of late winter," he writes. "My devotion never wavers, but it's a tough sell to others: Only one brave friend now regularly turns up to watch a ceremony that starts at midnight local time and runs notoriously long. We surface at the end like veterans of youthful nights out, jet-lagged for the week to come." One group of folks not in a particularly celebratory mood, says Thomas Buckley, is the local Angelenos who actually make movies. "The industry is once again awash in gloom," he reports, with guild-member employment down 35% to 40%. Still, the winners on Sunday will be the toast of the town. According to betting markets, the biggest locks are the screenplay awards (Sinners for original, One Battle After Another for adapted), as well as best actress for Ireland's Jessie Buckley in Hamnet. All of them are trading at 96% or higher. A taste of the oceans Sea bass carpaccio and burrata feature at Arlecchino. Source: Andre-Pierre du Plessis/Bloomberg It should surprise no one that Cape Town, the only major city on two different oceans, has spectacular seafood. At Arlecchino, in the Sea Point neighborhood, founder Natasha Sideris serves tuna tagliata topped with anchovy crumb for 328 South African rand, about $19. Arlecchino is one of our Five Top Tables in the city, along with La Colombe, in Constantia Nek, the highest-ranked dining room in Africa on the World's 50 Best restaurant list. There, the chef's menu is 2,395 rand. When André-Pierre du Plessis went there, he was served Namibian red crab and local coastal succulents, accompanied by a South African-spiced Cape Malay velouté. No wonder Dua Lipa showed off her meal there on Instagram. Quote of the week: The right way to sell high-end watches "We try not to have a system you've seen elsewhere that you have to buy these five things that you don't want in order to be able to get the one thing that you do want. We feel that's just not a really nice experience, especially if you're putting down a significant amount of money. You should be able to get what you actually enjoy." —Greubel Forsey CEO Michel Nydegger throwing some very polite shade at some of his Swiss rivals, and luxury retail in general, in conversation with Chris Rovzar New for subscribers: Free article gifting. Bloomberg.com subscribers can now gift up to five free articles a month to anyone you want. Just look for the "Gift this article" button on stories. (Not a subscriber? Unlock unlimited access and sign up here.) We're improving your newsletter experience and we'd love your feedback. If something looks off, help us fine-tune your experience by reporting it here. Follow us You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Pursuits newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, sign up here to get it in your inbox. Unsubscribe Bloomberg.com Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue New York, NY 10022 |