In an age where culinary capital is often measured by heritage, think Parisian bistros or New York delis, it’s time to recognise Dubai’s rapid ascent. A decade ago, such a claim might have seemed audacious. Today, Dubai is poised to outrank Paris, London, Tokyo, and New York as the world’s leading food capital.

Dubai welcomed a record-breaking 18.7 million overnight visitors in 2024, a 9.1 per cebt increase over 2023, according to data from Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism (DET), as cited by Cavendish Maxwell.

Dubai‘s hotel occupancy levels reached 81 per cent in the first half of 2025, marking a 4.5 per cent increase year-on-year, whilst international visitor numbers climbed 6.1 per cent to almost 10 million between January and June, according to research from real estate advisory group Cavendish Maxwell.

The tourism sector contributed an estimated Dhs236bn to the UAE economy, around 12 per cent of national GDP, based on figures from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), referenced in Cavendish Maxwell’s UAE Market Report. This growth is reflected in aviation figures: Dubai International Airport processed over 92 million passengers in 2024, its highest annual total on record, according to Dubai Airports data reported by Global Media Insight. These figures signal a business environment ripe for international F&B ventures and bold hospitality investment.

Investment in hospitality infrastructure

The UAE’s hospitality market is forecast to expand from $53bn in 2024 to $69.6 bn by 2030, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5 per cent, according to industry projections from Mordor Intelligence. Dubai is expected to lead this growth, with nearly 11,300 new hotel rooms set to open by 2027 and the creation of over 15,000 hospitality jobs, based on figures from

Knight Frank cited in Cavendish Maxwell’s UAE Market Report. This expansion aligns with the UAE Tourism Strategy 2031, which targets positioning the country among the world’s top three global tourism destinations by 2033, as outlined by the UAE Ministry of Economy and referenced in KPMG’s market analysis.

The UAE’s food and beverage sector

According to the Food & Beverage Market Trends report by Ollen Group, the UAE’s food and beverage sector is projected to reach $44bn bby 2029, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 17.1 per cent.

A separate forecast published by Sol Mercado indicates the industry is expected to surpass $37bn by 2025, with a CAGR of around 6.9 per cent.

These projections are grounded in several broader growth drivers, including:

• The UAE’s strategic location, world-class infrastructure, and logistical capabilities.
• A highly diversified tourism base exhibiting strong demand for new culinary experiences.
• Business-friendly regulations such as free zones and pro-investment policies, which attract global F&B brands.

Innovative ecosystems

The emirate’s agritech incubators are playing a pivotal role in shaping the future of food production, supporting ventures in vertical farming, hydroponics, aquaponics, and AI-enabled agriculture. By accelerating innovation in controlled-environment farming and smart irrigation systems, these programs not only strengthen Dubai’s food security but also reduce reliance on imports in line with the UAE’s National Food Security Strategy 2051.

Many of these incubators are strategically linked with research institutions and global technology partners, ensuring that knowledge transfer, advanced R&D, and pilot programmes are embedded into the ecosystem. Beyond improving yields and reducing water consumption, the initiatives are driving sustainable urban farming models that can be scaled regionally and globally. The result is an emerging pipeline of homegrown solutions that meet the dual objectives of commercial viability and environmental stewardship, positioning Dubai as a hub for agritech innovation across the Middle East.

Competitive market dynamics

Dubai’s culinary scene is among the world’s densest, with approximately 13,000 food and beverage establishments, placing it second only to Paris in per-capita restaurant density. This highlights the emirate’s global ambition, but the sheer scale also creates challenges: escalating rents, rising operational costs, and thin margins remain pressing realities for operators.

Despite these pressures, the market continues to expand, supported by strong consumer demand, evolving tastes, and Dubai’s infrastructure that enables rapid adaptation to global culinary trends. Within the broader GCC, the emirate is viewed as the central hub, its multicultural audience, connectivity, and investment in food innovation positioning it at the forefront of regional food and beverage growth.

The business case for Dubai as the next food capital

For B2B stakeholders, hotel chains, restaurateurs, investors, and service providers—the rationale is clear:

• Scale & spending: Visitors to Dubai spend more per capita than in many other leading tourism markets, according to [AP News, Dubai’s tourism revenue report, 2024].
• Infrastructure & access: Dubai’s free zones, logistics networks, and business-friendly regulations make it easier for companies to scale operations, as outlined in the [Ollen Group UAE F&B Market Report, 2023] and [Fortune Business Insights, Food Service Market Forecast 2024–2032].
• Innovation pipeline: The city is advancing agritech, AI-operated kitchens, and smart food production technologies, with initiatives supported by the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment and Dubai Future Foundation.
• Future growth: Aligned with the Dubai Economic Agenda D33, which aims to double the economy in 10 years and place Dubai among the top three global cities for tourism and business by 2033 ([Government of Dubai, 2023]) – the F&B sector is positioned as a core driver of diversification and global competitiveness.

Dubai’s culinary future is bright

The Middle East is already at the epicentre of hospitality and F&B, thanks to its vision, investment, and appetite for excellence. Here in Dubai, the stage is set to claim its place as the world’s food capital.

For businesses ready to shape culinary future stories, Dubai offers not just opportunity, but leadership.

The writer is the co-founder and vice chairman of Sunset Hospitality Group.

botim money, the financial services arm of botim, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Binance to explore ways of providing digital asset access to millions of users in the UAE.

The MoU marks botim’s push to evolve from a communications focused platform into a unified fintech ecosystem that lets users pay, transfer and invest within the same app. The agreement was signed during Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai.

The two companies will study how Binance’s digital asset capabilities can be combined with botim’s fintech reach in the UAE. Their discussions focus on identifying practical, compliant solutions that could give users safe access to digital assets.

The move comes amid rising global and regional interest in cryptocurrencies, supported in the Middle East by regulatory frameworks that promote responsible financial innovation. Both parties will evaluate how potential services could align with the UAE’s existing rules and how they might expand digital financial participation.

botim money serves a large base of underserved and unbanked users who have limited exposure to traditional financial systems. As part of the MoU, the companies will explore simplified and secure access routes to digital assets for these communities through regulated channels.

Crypto is increasingly part of mainstream financial services, says Binance exec

Catherine Chen, head of VIP and Institutional at Binance, said crypto is increasingly part of mainstream financial services. “Crypto is no longer a niche asset class and it is increasingly becoming integrated into everyday financial services. Our collaboration with botim money to make digital assets accessible to botim’s tech savvy customers exemplifies this shift. The UAE is taking exciting steps to connect traditional finance with digital assets, and we are pleased to keep supporting the local community and ecosystem,” she said.

Sacha Haider, chief strategy officer of Astra Tech | botim, said the company’s payments infrastructure already supports significant transaction flows. “Our international and national P2P rails support large and growing transaction flows every day, showing how deeply integrated botim money has become in people’s financial lives. Unlocking crypto capabilities with Binance allows us to build on this foundation and offer customers new ways to engage with the digital economy. Our focus remains on giving people simple and secure tools to manage and grow their money,” she said.

The signing at Binance Blockchain Week underscores Dubai’s emergence as a key hub for global blockchain and crypto activity.

Cybersecurity is undergoing a dramatic transformation driven by the rise of artificial intelligence. Threats are growing in complexity and speed and many businesses are demanding AI-powered solutions to counter them. In fact, 94 per cent deem them crucial, and with good reason: in 2024, organizations using AI and automation extensively in prevention averaged savings of $2.2m versus those that didn’t.

Vendors are racing to capitalise on this demand with campaigns built on “next-gen” AI features, but amid the surge of solutions, one truth stands out: not all are created equal. AI models, by nature, are only as good as the data they’re trained on and the context in which they’re applied. Inexperienced vendors may rely on limited datasets, overlook subtle attack vectors or fail to prevent adversarial manipulation, which can lead to false positives, misplaced confidence, and missed threats.

Read more-Inside Kaspersky’s plan to build cyber immune systems for the GCC

Kaspersky, however, began implementing AI and machine learning (ML) in its solutions over two decades ago. While movies like I, Robot were envisaging humanity’s demise at AI’s hands, Kaspersky was exploring the potential of this infant technology to make the world a safer place. This foresight, coupled with long-term investment, has resulted in smarter, faster and more reliable protection today, not built on hype but on years of innovation and proven performance.

All of this leaves Kaspersky well placed to shape the future of AI-driven security.

20 years of innovation, training and real-world testing

For over two decades Kaspersky has built and refined advanced ML models trained on huge volumes of anonymized global telemetry, collected ethically and responsibly from millions of endpoints worldwide. This reservoir of high‑quality data has enabled Kaspersky to develop AI systems that are not only safe and accurate but also resilient to evolving threats.

What sets Kaspersky apart is that AI isn’t a bolt-on feature; it’s embedded in every layer of its technology stack. Head of Unified Platform at Kaspersky Ilya Markelov says:

All of our products include AI technology. SIEM, EPP, EDR, NDR, XDR, MDR, Threat Intelligence, all of them. Where there’s no AI assistant, there’s KSN, a global network delivering insights from our cloud-based models to our customers. AI drives almost everything we do.

This deep integration ensures faster detection, smarter automation and a consistent standard of protection across all of its products.

With AI as a foundational capability, not an add-on, Kaspersky delivers cybersecurity that’s informed by its real‑world usage. The vendor doesn’t propose what AI might be able to do; it has proof of what it’s already done with the technology, being one of the first to start leveraging it. Kaspersky CEO and founder Eugene Kaspersky says:

What I’m especially pleased and proud of in this process is that our company was one of the first in the industry to successfully implement this bright AI future. How else could we cope, for example, with almost half a million new malware every day? No educational system in the world could graduate so many experts.

While today the company has a well-established AI Technology Research Center, which tackles challenges at the AI–cybersecurity intersection, it began the journey in 2004 when its first AI/ML technology for automatic analysis of malicious code was born. Kaspersky named it Auto-woodpecker because, at the time, it lovingly called its human analysts who were “pecking away” at viruses “woodpeckers.” Auto-woodpecker could do this usually time-consuming job independently, freeing specialists from routine work and helping to highlight identical (or likely) incidents. The result was productivity that increased many times over.

Another milestone in the company’s journey was its patenting of an automated false-positive testing technology based on ML algorithms in 2015. Between 2019 and 2022, the number of ML inventions patented by Kaspersky increased by 19 times. And in 2024 it achieved a 25 per cent increase in APT detection using ML.

More recently, in 2025, Kaspersky updated its SIEM platform with a powerful new AI module for faster and more effective alert triage.

The result: Smart, fast, accessible protection

Kaspersky’s long-term AI investment has resulted in a cybersecurity portfolio that delivers smart, fast and accessible protection for businesses of all sizes. Its AI technologies power real-time threat detection, behavioral analysis and automated response, ensuring a rapid and intelligent defense against both known and emerging threats. Trained on global threat intelligence, its models are capable of detecting novel and targeted attacks that may evade traditional security tools.

These capabilities are embedded across the entire product suite. In 2024, more than 6 million attacks on users of Kaspersky’s mobile products were prevented by Cloud ML, a cloud-based AI technology that detects even previously unknown malicious Android apps in real time by analysing a set of unique attributes. Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack (KATA) solution uses machine learning to uncover complex, multi-stage threats for enterprises. And around 1,000 phishing webpages are detected daily by its ML-based web phishing detection engine.

A fully AI-powered portfolio, not just at the top end, means the technology works for, and is accessible to, Kaspersky’s broad range of customers. Small to medium-sized businesses can access enterprise-grade protection without the need for large in-house teams, while enterprises get security that augments their capability and scales alongside them.

Conclusion: Proven experience matters

Kaspersky has continuously refined its AI technology to stay ahead of evolving cybersecurity threats. Its long‑term commitment to in-house development allows it to build AI that is not only smarter but also more trustworthy and better equipped for the challenges of tomorrow.

This deep expertise enables it to deliver proactive, reliable protection that adapts and learns as cyberthreats evolve. And as cybercrime becomes faster and more sophisticated, Kaspersky’s AI will become an even more vital asset in securing businesses from harm.

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of the UAE, and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai, has announced the citywide introduction of a one-time contactless hotel guest check-in solution. The initiative marks a major advancement in guest convenience, safety, and hospitality innovation, enabling visitors to bypass traditional in-person check-in procedures once the system is implemented across hotels and holiday homes. It also represents a key milestone in delivering the objectives of the Dubai Economic Agenda, D33, which aims to reinforce Dubai’s standing as a premier global destination for business and leisure.

Developed by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) and supported by several independent providers, the new biometric and digital capability is now available for integration at hotels and holiday homes throughout the city. The technology equips hospitality operators with a streamlined tool that enhances operational efficiency while significantly elevating the guest experience. Its rollout aligns closely with Dubai’s commitment to advanced digital infrastructure, smart services, and future-ready mobility solutions that underpin the D33 agenda, a Dubai Media Office report said.

Read more-Zero fees: Dubai’s bold incentive targets new hotels

The system allows guests to complete all check-in formalities from their mobile phones well before arriving at their hotel. By uploading required identification documents and biometric information once, visitors can fully automate the check-in process. Upon arrival, guests at participating properties can bypass traditional reception procedures entirely, beginning their stay without delay.

The securely stored data remains valid until the uploaded identification document expires. This enables returning visitors, who account for nearly a quarter of Dubai’s annual arrivals, to authenticate quickly through methods such as facial recognition. The convenience supports Dubai’s ambition to enhance loyalty among repeat travellers while reducing pressure on hotel operations during peak tourism periods.

Leadership vision for continued tourism growth

Enabling sustained growth, Sheikh Hamdan said: “Guided by the directives of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, our city continues to lead the way in embracing innovation and creating unparalleled experiences. By leveraging cutting-edge solutions, we are not only enhancing the visitor journey, but also strategically positioning Dubai for sustained tourism growth. Aligning perfectly with the Dubai Economic Agenda, D33, the rollout of this technology is a testament to our vision for a smart, seamless, and secure urban environment and reflects our commitment to further consolidating Dubai’s position as a leading global destination for business and leisure.”

Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General of DET, added: “The introduction of this citywide one-time contactless check-in solution is a pivotal moment for Dubai’s hospitality industry and a clear demonstration of our progress towards achieving the goals of the D33 agenda. Furthermore, it showcases the transformative power of collaboration across the public and private sectors in Dubai, delivering benefits to both stakeholders and visitors. Guided by our city’s visionary leadership, we continue to pursue opportunities to facilitate the continued growth of the city’s tourism ecosystem and further elevate its vital contribution to the emirate’s economy.”

Expanding smart technology across the visitor journey

Designed for efficient integration into existing hotel apps or websites, the system allows properties to adopt the solution with minimal transition challenges. The technology’s adaptability also creates opportunities to extend its use to other tourism-related services, including car rentals, ensuring that visitors encounter consistently streamlined processes across multiple touchpoints.

Its introduction complements Dubai’s growing suite of smart-city innovations. These include digital services deployed at airports, such as the smart tunnel at Dubai International Airport, which has reduced passport control processing times to mere seconds. Combined, these efforts reflect a broader strategy to deliver frictionless, technology-enabled travel experiences for millions of international visitors.

Dubai’s hospitality industry remains a significant pillar of its global appeal. With 820 hotels and hotel apartments offering internationally recognised service standards, the sector supports the emirate’s broader tourism ecosystem. The city welcomed 15.70 million international overnight visitors in the first ten months of 2025, a 5% increase year-on-year. Guests spent a total of 36.71 million room nights during this period, underscoring both the strength of demand and Dubai’s continued success in attracting travellers seeking high-quality service, efficiency, and convenience.

By introducing the one-time contactless check-in system, Dubai advances its long-term vision to deliver a seamlessly integrated hospitality landscape grounded in innovation, smart technology, and global competitiveness.