The World Islands

PROCESS · SEPTEMBER 14 · 6 MIN

Dubai Smart City in 2026: What Autonomous Taxis and AI Government Services Already Do

What Driverless Taxis and Paperless Government Offices Reveal About Dubai's Smart City Bet A passenger climbs into a taxi in Abu Dhabi, opens a ride-hailing app, and watches the driver's seat sit empty for the whole trip. A few kilometers away, a resident renews a business…

UNCATEGORIZED · AUG 27 · 8 MIN

RAK Guarantee: Why Ras Al Khaimah Put Itself on the Hook, Not the Tourist

RAK Guarantee: How Ras Al Khaimah Just Rewrote the Rules on Tourist Booking Risk Ras Al Khaimah has launched a free booking protection program for tourists, and the timing tells you as much as the mechanics do. Called RAK Guarantee, the program activates when Russian or UAE authorities issue an official recommendation against travel between …

UNCATEGORIZED · AUG 26 · 6 MIN

Dubai Creek Lights Up: Inside Dubai Municipality’s AED 80 Million Waterfront Project

Dubai Creek Lights: What an AED 80 Million Waterfront Project Means for Bur Dubai and Deira Property Dubai Municipality has begun rolling out Dubai Creek Lights, a permanent lighting installation covering roughly 8 km of the Creek waterfront on both banks, Bur Dubai and Deira. The AED 80 million project brings more than 5,000 energy-efficient …

UNCATEGORIZED · AUG 26 · 7 MIN

Abu Dhabi’s Free Visa for Indian Tourists and What It Changes for the Property Market

Abu Dhabi Opens Free Tourist Visas for Indian Travellers: What It Means for the Market Abu Dhabi has opened a temporary window for Indian travellers to enter the UAE on a free tourist visa, and the mechanics matter more than the headline. The offer, run by the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, covers …

UNCATEGORIZED · AUG 25 · 7 MIN

What Not to Do in the UAE: The Rules No Brochure Mentions

What UAE Visitors and Buyers Get Wrong: The Rules Nobody Explains What UAE visitors miss is not the headline law. It is the small stuff: a phone camera raised toward a stranger, a coffee sipped on a sidewalk during Ramadan daylight, a middle finger flashed in traffic frustration, a bottle of wine ordered in the …

UNCATEGORIZED · AUG 25 · 7 MIN

UAE just opened tariff-free access to 86% of EAEU goods

The EAEU-UAE Economic Partnership Agreement enters into force on October 6, 2026, and it will reshape trade flows before it touches a single property listing. That gap between headline and consequence is where our team’s analysis starts, because for buyers watching the UAE market, trade policy rarely stays trade policy for long. The agreement itself …

UNCATEGORIZED · AUG 24 · 7 MIN

How the UAE Brought the Arabian Oryx Back From Extinction

The Arabian Oryx and the Long Game of Recovery In 1972, the last wild Arabian oryx was shot in the desert of Oman. For years afterward, every living Arabian oryx anywhere on earth stood behind bars or fencing, in zoos, private collections and a handful of breeding programs scattered from Arizona to the Gulf. A …

UNCATEGORIZED · AUG 23 · 7 MIN

4.58 million residents: Dubai’s fastest growth since 1980

Dubai’s resident population has crossed 4.58 million, up 7.5% over the past year, and this is the number our team keeps returning to when clients ask why rents in well-connected districts haven’t softened despite record handover volumes. What the numbers actually say According to Digital Dubai and the Dubai Data and Statistics Establishment, the emirate’s …