It is late May in Dubai and the city is slowing. Some of that is the calendar. The summer low season is ahead, the temperature is climbing and the beach clubs are starting to count the weeks. Some of it is the regional situation, which has affected travel and visitor numbers in ways every operator here is feeling. I am not going to speculate about where that goes. What I want to talk about is what hospitality businesses in the city can do about the next few months.
Who keeps the lights on
When the visitors thin out, the venues that survive the summer are the ones with a base of residents and repeat guests. It is the same every year, and it is more true this year. The tourist who found you on a list is not here. The resident who comes every other Thursday is, and so are their friends, and so is the family who has been coming to the same brunch for three years.
Hotels know this. The good ones have been quietly building resident programmes for years, with pool passes, dining credits and a rate for people with a local ID. Restaurants and cafés are catching up. The ones that do best in the quiet months are the ones that treat the summer as a season for regulars rather than a gap to be endured.
What loyalty actually does in a slow period
It is tempting to see a loyalty programme as a thing for busy times, a way to capture the crowd when it is there. I think the reverse is more useful. A programme earns its keep when the room is half full, because that is when a visit from a member is the difference between a shift that pays and one that does not.
Three things it does, in practice. It tells you who your regulars are, by name and by spend, so you can look after them deliberately rather than by luck. It gives you a channel to reach them that is not a discount site. And it gives the regulars themselves a reason to feel that this is their place, which is a surprisingly strong motivation to leave an air-conditioned flat in July.
The data side is the part most operators under-use. If you have a programme, you can see right now which members visited last summer and which have not been in since March. That is your list. Not a mass blast. A short, warm note to the people you would most like to see.
A city that looks after its own
One of the things I have come to value about Dubai, living here, is that for all the glamour it is a community. A fairly small one, once you are inside it. Operators know each other. Chefs move between kitchens. Regulars follow a general manager from one venue to the next. When things are harder, that community tends to close ranks and look after its own, and I have seen that this month in small ways: venues promoting each other, groups sharing what is working, a lot less posturing than usual.
That is the spirit I would build a summer around. Fewer launches, more care. Fewer campaigns, more conversations with the people who are actually here.
An offer
If you run a hotel, restaurant, café or beach club in the region and want a second opinion on how to use your guest data this summer, I am happy to have a conversation. Free, no pitch. It might be a look at your member list, a view on an offer, or just a sounding board on what to prioritise before the autumn. We have been here through the good seasons and we would like to be useful in a quieter one.
Get in touch. And look after your regulars. They are the ones who will still be here in September.
If any of this is relevant to your estate, get in touch. There is more writing here, and the studio behind the work is TheLoyaltyCo.