Bustling bars, surging business: Dubai sees a post-vax boom | AP News
Nations around the world are lurching into lockdown, steeling themselves for a brutal surge as the omicron variant spreads like wildfire.
But in Dubai, Donna Sese is bracing for a very different surge: countless restaurant bookings and meter-long drink bills.
“We’re back and busy like the way things used to be,” said Sese, manager of the Yalumba restaurant at the five-star Le Meridien hotel, where devotees of Dubai’s Friday brunch pay $250 for lavish spreads with free-flowing Clicquot Champagne.
The globalized city-state appears to be in the midst of a boom season, spurred on by one of the world’s highest vaccination rates and government steps to lure businesses and de-escalate tensions with regional rivals.
Maskless debauchery has returned to dance floors. Brunch-goers are drinking with abandon. Home-buyers are flooding the market. Tourists are snapping up hotel suites. Expat millionaires are moving to the emirate. Coronavirus infections, although now making a comeback, remain below past peaks.
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