Residents across the UAE are set to experience a stretch of intense heat during the Eid Al Adha holiday period, with temperatures expected to soar as high as 48°C in inland areas, according to the National Centre of Meteorology (NCM).

The weather authority said conditions throughout the week would remain hot over inland regions and relatively hot across coastal areas and islands during daytime hours, while nights and early mornings are expected to be generally moderate, a WAM report said.

Read more-Last-minute Eid plans? Dubai hotels launch staycation packages

According to the NCM forecast, the country will continue to experience fair to partly cloudy weather through Friday, with clouds expected to develop at times over eastern regions. The latest weather bulletin noted that weak surface pressure systems, combined with an upper-air high-pressure extension, are influencing conditions across the Emirates.

Temperatures set to rise across the UAE

Forecasters said maximum temperatures are expected to range between 35°C and 43°C in coastal areas and islands, while inland regions could see temperatures climb between 43°C and 48°C. Mountainous areas are forecast to remain comparatively cooler, with highs ranging from 28°C to 35°C.

Minimum temperatures are expected to vary between 24°C and 32°C along the coast and islands, 19°C to 27°C inland, and between 24°C and 30°C in mountainous regions.

The NCM also warned that humidity levels will increase during late night and early morning hours, particularly across coastal areas. Humidity could reach up to 90 percent in some coastal and island locations, raising the likelihood of mist or light fog formation, especially on Monday and Friday mornings.

Officials said fog or mist may develop over western coastal areas as humid conditions intensify overnight into Tuesday morning.

Winds to trigger dusty conditions

Winds are expected to remain light to moderate throughout much of the week, shifting from southeasterly to northwesterly directions. However, weather officials warned that winds could freshen at times during the daytime, reaching speeds of up to 35 km/hr and causing blowing dust in exposed areas.

In mountainous regions, winds are forecast to vary from southwesterly to northeasterly at similar speeds.

Despite the warmer temperatures and occasional dusty conditions, sea conditions are expected to remain relatively calm. The Arabian Gulf and the Oman Sea are both forecast to stay slight throughout the week.

Stable conditions expected through friday

The broader weather outlook indicates generally stable conditions across the country from Tuesday through Friday, with fair to partly cloudy skies continuing in most regions.

Humidity is expected to persist during nighttime and early morning hours over coastal locations, while daytime conditions will remain dry and hot.

Winds are likely to stay light to moderate overall, occasionally becoming fresh during the afternoon.

By Friday, forecasters expect winds to ease slightly, with speeds ranging between 10 km/hr and 20 km/hr, reaching up to 30 km/hr at times.

Authorities have urged residents to take precautions during peak daytime hours as temperatures continue to rise during the Eid holiday week.

“The public is advised to avoid direct exposure to sunlight during daytime hours,” the NCM said in its advisory.

Weather officials also encouraged residents to stay hydrated and monitor official forecasts for any updates related to fog, reduced visibility or dusty conditions over the coming days.

Dubai’s hospitality sector is rolling out a series of Eid-focused staycation and leisure packages as hotels and beach destinations look to capitalise on heightened domestic tourism demand during the upcoming long weekend.

Operators including voco Bonnington Dubai, Mövenpick Jumeirah Lakes Towers and RIVA Beach Club have launched bundled accommodation and beach access offers aimed at residents seeking short-haul leisure experiences within the emirate.

The seasonal campaigns reflect a broader trend across Dubai’s hospitality market, where hotels and lifestyle destinations increasingly use value-added packages, flexible check-in benefits and food-and-beverage incentives to drive occupancy and consumer spending during peak holiday periods.

At voco Bonnington Dubai, Eid staycation packages are available between May 20 and May 31, with rates starting from Dhs250++ per room per night, excluding the Tourism Dirham Fee. The offer includes complimentary access to RIVA Beach Club, alongside room upgrades subject to availability, early check-in and late check-out options.

The property is also leveraging cross-brand partnerships to encourage repeat visitation, with guests spending Dhs400 at the beach club receiving an Dhs100 voucher redeemable on a future visit.

Meanwhile, Mövenpick Jumeirah Lakes Towers has introduced a family-oriented Eid package running across the same period, with room rates starting from Dhs300++ per night. The campaign includes a “book one room, get the second at 50 per cent off” promotion, in addition to complimentary access to RIVA Beach Club.

Beach and day-leisure experiences are also expected to see increased traction during the Eid holiday period. RIVA Beach Club has launched a range of Eid long weekend offers targeting both residents and staycation guests, including weekday access packages and beverage-led pool experiences.

The beach club’s Eid promotion is priced at Dhs150 per adult, including Dhs125 redeemable on food and beverages, while children’s access is priced at Dhs99 and fully redeemable on dining. A separate “Sip & Splash” package offers three hours of unlimited house beverages with pool access for Dhs199 per person.

It starts long before the property search

When we created Horse & Houses, it was never meant to feel like a traditional property business.

The idea came from something much more personal, understanding how closely lifestyle, horses and home all become connected within the equestrian world. Once you live that lifestyle yourself, you realise very quickly that relocating is never just about the house.

It is about everything around it.

The stable environment.
The facilities.
The morning routine.
The community around you.
How life will actually feel once you arrive.

For equestrian people, horses naturally shape everyday life. They influence where you live, how you spend your time and even the pace at which you want to live.

That is why we have always approached relocation differently.

Before property conversations even begin, people are usually asking questions like:

Where will the horses be based?
How accessible are the facilities?
Will the environment suit the lifestyle they want day to day?

People are starting to prioritise lifestyle again

Over the last few years, more and more people have started thinking differently about what they actually want from life.

There has been a noticeable move away from purely transactional decisions and towards lifestyle-led living. People want more balance, more space and more connection to what genuinely makes them happy outside of work and business.

Success is no longer only measured by what somebody owns but by how life actually feels once the day slows down.

That is part of the reason equestrian communities continue growing across Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

While both cities are globally recognised for modern living and opportunity, there is also growing demand for quieter residential environments connected to stables, polo clubs and outdoor lifestyle communities.

Not every equestrian lifestyle looks the same

One of the biggest misconceptions around equestrian living is that everyone wants exactly the same thing.

The reality is completely different.

For some people, it is peaceful mornings in quieter communities surrounded by open space and nature. For others, it is beachfront living with easy access to riding facilities and polo clubs nearby. Some are drawn towards golf estates where privacy and lifestyle naturally align together, while others still want the energy of city living without losing connection to the horse world around them.

The UAE has become particularly attractive because it offers that balance while also supporting a strong equestrian calendar, with both national and international competitions continuing to attract riders and horse owners from around the world.

The horse world creates different connections

There is something about the horse world that naturally slows people down in a good way.

Early mornings at the stables, training routines, competitions and weekends around horses create structure and balance in a world that often feels permanently switched on.

It also creates genuine relationships.

Some of the strongest friendships and conversations happen naturally in equestrian environments because people connect through shared lifestyles first.

For equestrian people especially, the right move is rarely just about the house itself. It is about being close to the right facilities, the right community and an environment where both they and their horses can settle properly.

More than just finding a home

That is really where the idea behind Horse & Houses came from.

Not just helping people secure property but helping them build the lifestyle around it properly.

The phrase “Fly your horse, secure your home” was created because that is genuinely how many people approach relocation within this world. The horse often arrives before the furniture does. The stable is sometimes chosen before the property.

Because in the end, it is never really just about the horse or the house individually. It is about how life feels when both finally come together in the right place.

As the UAE accelerates its ambitions to become a global leader in advanced mobility and autonomous logistics, drone delivery operators are facing growing scrutiny around safety, regulation, and public trust. Against a backdrop of increasing geopolitical sensitivity around unmanned aerial systems globally, companies operating in the sector are under pressure to prove that rapid innovation can coexist with strict regulatory oversight and operational reliability.

For Keeta Drone, that balance has become central to its expansion strategy in the UAE. The company, which has completed more than a year of commercial operations in the country, says its approach has been deliberately built around what it describes as a “safety-before-scale” philosophy.

According to Junwei Yang, general manager of Keeta Drone, the company’s regulatory alignment with Dubai authorities has been embedded into operations from the outset rather than treated as a later-stage compliance exercise.

“Safety is where we start; it isn’t something we layer on top of what we build,” Yang said. “From our very first licensed operations in Dubai, we made a deliberate choice to move in complete synergy with the DCAA. That means every route we fly, every community we enter, every new capability we introduce has regulatory alignment right from the beginning.”

The company operates under the framework of the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA), which has been steadily expanding regulatory pathways for commercial drone operations in the emirate as part of broader smart mobility and urban airspace initiatives.

Yang said some of the most critical regulatory requirements shaping commercial drone deployment include beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) approvals, airspace coordination, approved flight corridors, aircraft certification, remote monitoring systems, and emergency response protocols.

“What the DCAA has built is genuinely world-class. It’s rigorous, yes, but that rigour is exactly what gives operators like us, and the public, confidence that what’s flying overhead is safe.”

Scaling cautiously in complex urban airspace

While much of the global drone delivery industry remains focused on aggressive expansion targets, Yang said Keeta Drone has intentionally prioritised gradual operational scaling.

“It means we don’t add a new route, a new community, or a new use case until we’re certain the safety foundations are in place along with our regulatory authorities,” he said.

“In practice, that looks like extensive simulation testing, expansion of operational zones and continuous testing as an operational non-negotiable. This has helped us scale to close to 900,000 orders across geographies.”

Operating drones in dense urban environments presents additional technical and operational complexity, particularly in cities such as Dubai where airspace is heavily managed and infrastructure density is high.

Yang said the company relies on a “Trajectory-Based Operation System” that dynamically optimises routes in real time while integrating geofencing and remote monitoring layers.

“Our Trajectory-Based Operation System is really the backbone of how we manage this effortlessly,” he said. “Every drone flies a pre-approved, dynamically optimised route which adapts in real time to conditions, airspace activity, and any changes on the ground.”

“Geofencing creates hard boundaries around restricted zones – airports, sensitive infrastructure, populated areas outside approved air space corridors and the drone simply does cross them. Remote Cockpit Monitoring means a human eye is always across the fleet, even as the drones operate autonomously.”

He added: “It’s a layered system, and that’s intentional. It is this system of technology that carries the whole weight of safety.”

Engineering for Gulf climate conditions

The UAE’s climate also creates unique engineering demands for autonomous aerial systems, with high temperatures, humidity, and dust conditions placing significant stress on batteries, propulsion systems, and onboard electronics.

Yang said adapting operations to Gulf conditions became one of the company’s earliest localisation priorities.

“This was one of the most important localisation challenges we adapted to,” he said. “Our drones have been structurally adapted and rigorously tested to withstand extreme desert heat up to 50 degrees, the kind of temperatures that stress components in ways temperate environments simply don’t.”

“We’ve also developed nighttime flight capability, where our drones can fly in the dark.”

The localisation process, however, extended beyond engineering adjustments.

“Localisation is everything, and it goes deeper,” Yang said. “It’s not just about adapting hardware for the climate; it’s about understanding when people order, what they order, how communities are laid out, and how to build genuine relationships with regulators and authorities.” Despite rapid advances in drone technology, public perception remains one of the biggest barriers to mainstream adoption globally, particularly around concerns tied to safety, privacy, and noise.

Read: Delivery services: Keeta Drone inks key MoUs with Dubai Municipality, Sobha Realty

Yang acknowledged that community trust remains essential to long-term adoption and said operational transparency has become a major focus for the company.

“We engage actively with communities before we enter them, and we operate transparently within DCAA-approved frameworks that residents can verify,” he said. “On noise and privacy specifically, our drones follow fixed, approved corridors and are designed to minimise acoustic impact.” He added that public sentiment often changes once residents experience drone delivery directly.

“When someone receives their first drone delivery, watches it arrive on time, quietly and safely, something shifts,” Yang said. “The abstract worry becomes a real interaction, and the reality is almost always more reassuring than the anticipation.”

UAE positions itself as an early drone delivery leader

The UAE has increasingly positioned itself as a testbed for next-generation mobility technologies, including autonomous vehicles, flying taxis, and drone logistics networks.

Yang said long-term mainstream adoption will depend on three major factors: regulatory expansion, ecosystem integration, and operational consistency.

“First, continued regulatory evolution, the DCAA’s ambition to cover 70 per cent of Dubai within five years, is exactly the kind of forward policy that unlocks infrastructure,” he said.

“Second, community integration, partnerships like the one we’ve announced with Sobha Realty are how drone delivery stops being something people read about and starts being something they use.”

“And third, consistency, every safe delivery, every reliable experience, builds the public trust that makes mainstream adoption possible.”

Yang believes the UAE is taking a globally distinctive approach by actively accelerating deployment rather than waiting for international proof points to emerge elsewhere.

“The groundwork is already being laid,” he said. “The UAE isn’t waiting for drone delivery to become normal elsewhere first; it’s deciding to lead and we are here for it.”

Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) has introduced updated rules regulating the use and transport of portable chargers, commonly known as power banks, on flights operating through the kingdom’s airports.

The new measures, announced in a circular sent to all airlines, are designed to strengthen onboard safety and align with international aviation standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization, according to a report carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

Read more- Gulf travel update: UAE airlines launch new routes as Bahrain enforces Ebola curbs

Under the revised regulations, passengers and cabin crew members are no longer permitted to recharge power banks during flights. Authorities also confirmed that portable chargers must be carried only in hand luggage inside the aircraft cabin and are strictly banned from checked baggage.

Passenger limit set

The authority said travelers will be allowed to carry a maximum of two power banks each while onboard aircraft.

Officials further advised passengers to avoid using portable chargers to power electronic devices during flights, describing the recommendation as an additional safety precaution aimed at reducing potential fire risks linked to lithium battery devices.

The latest directive comes as global aviation authorities continue reviewing battery-related safety procedures on commercial flights.