Dubai market review: what my booking calendar shows after the conflict
I film businesses in Dubai. Corporate work, conferences, brand content. When companies feel good they book me. When they get scared, I'm the first thing they cut. So my calendar works as an early signal for small business activity here.
March was the floor
The conflict with Iran started at the end of February. Bookings didn't slow down, they stopped. The big conferences got cancelled because nobody was flying in or out.
February had 23 shoots. March had four. That's the bottom of the year, and it took one month to get there.
The volume came back faster than I expected
April was back to 19 shoots. Rates were low, but the volume returned within four weeks of the shock. May was 15 shoots and the first month in the plus.
Two things drove it. Companies that cancelled events moved the same budget into content. And visibility started to pay off - I made a documentary about local businesses during the drop, and clients called me because they saw it.
June is the number worth watching
Summer here is normally dead. Winter is the season. In summer nobody films outdoors, there are no conferences and no private events, so my income usually goes to zero. Every previous year I left the country for it.
This June: 20 shoots, with income at winter level.
Businesses that got hit in spring decided not to go quiet through the summer. They kept spending on content to stay visible. That doesn't normally happen in Dubai. It says the market is adapting instead of sitting still.
July slowed to 8 shoots and about break even, which is close to a normal July here.
Costs
Rent didn't move. My contract renewed at last year's price, and that's the biggest fixed cost in this city.
Goods did move. Food, electronics and a lot of imported items got more expensive, because logistics got harder while the Strait of Hormuz stays a question. If you're building a budget for Dubai, add your margin there, not in housing.
For reference, my full cost of living with two children and school runs about $6,000 a month.
Outlook
Air traffic hasn't fully recovered. Mostly Emirati carriers, a few foreign ones, so tourism is still waiting. That keeps hotels, retail and events under pressure into the autumn.
The business side is moving without them. Local companies are spending on content and marketing again, and they did it through the weakest months of the year. That's the part I'd watch.
My own year is still negative. The summer will close somewhere between minus seven and minus ten thousand dollars. I'm not going to tell you the market is booming.
What I can tell you is this. The floor was March. Volume recovered in about four weeks. And demand held through a summer that normally has none. If autumn brings the season back, this reads as a bad year in a working market.
