Barely 48 hours after my last post about Dubai’s baby steps towards transparency, comes the next manic debacle of what the Fast Company Magazine calls ‘The World’s Tallest FAIL!’
The observation deck on the Burj Khalifa’s 124th floor, which had been open for under a month, is now closed indefinitely and without prior notice, because of a mixed-bag of reasons officially stated. This is was in inimitable Dubai-style, followed by utter silence. Especially with the global media firing up their Dubai-bashing engines. Twitter was abuzz with ridicule, both locally and expectedly so, internationally as well.
I am aware this is not the government, but when a single company — government-linked, public-listed, builders of the world’s tallest tower — makes conflicting statements that vary from ‘technical difficulties’ to ‘unexpected traffic’ one can’t help but sit up and think.
The Guardian UK states: ‘The indefinite closure, which was imposed on Sunday, comes as Dubai struggles to revive its international image as a cutting-edge Arab metropolis, amid nagging questions about its financial health.”
With tourists showing up with pre-paid tickets to the Burj Khalifa, the press lambasting Dubai for yet another ‘leap-before-you-think’ move, Emaar remains quiet. Why? Is it really that difficult to counter criticism especially when one is well aware of how disproportionately it will be magnified.
To top it all off, this afternoon, upon typing in the domain name www.emaar.com, you were greeted with a domain registry page! Somebody clearly had forgotten to renew the URL. Not the kind of thing to forget when in the midst of a PR meltdown.
2 steps forward. 12 steps backwards. I rest my case.
This entry was written by , posted on at 10:31 pm, filed under Dubaiism and tagged burj khalifa, dubai, emaar, fail. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
I found this post titled ‘When Silence Ain’t Golden’ on Fake Plastic Souks by Alexander McNabb very thorough its in checklist of things ‘not-to-do’ in a case like this.
http://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2010/02/when-silence-aint-golden.html
A brilliant take on this fiasco, Danish.
It seems to me that Emaar has absolutely no interest in ‘justifying’ or `explaining` to the UAE press, let alone the international press, why they had to indefinitely shut the Burj - and I think this stems from an attitude that reeks of arrogance (or stupidity, come to think of it. Forgetting to renew your URL is quite pathetic for a company of its reach).
Or maybe they`re believers in the ’silence is golden’ rule. Right; now that`s what I call taking something to an extreme and applying it to every scenario that comes your way ; lack of common sense, maybe?
Why thankyou Muhajababe! Needless to say, there has been another high-profile disaster with the Dubai Mall Acquarium fiasco.