Exploit resources like Dubai did

Last year in 2015, 14.3 million tourists visited Dubai, making it the fourth most visited city in the world behind London, Paris and Bangkok. This was quite a feat for a city set right in the middle of the Arabian desert.

You may be shocked to learn that the Airlines Hotel, Dubai’s first ever hotel, was built in 1959. This was a whopping 57 years after Stanley Hotel, Nairobi’s pioneering hotel was constructed in 1902. Considering that Norfolk Hotel was constructed in 1904, Nairobi was for the first half of the twentieth century more equipped to host tourists than Dubai. Yet less than seven decades later in 2014, Dubai’s hotel rooms were rated as the second most expensive in the world, after Geneva. Demand from well-paying tourists was simply quite high.