Dubai’s new trend: Home is where the hotel is

Dubai’s new trend: Home is where the hotel is

‘Long-term stays’ in the hospitality sector is currently trending in Dubai

By Lekha Menon Published: Fri 6 May 2022, 9:28 PM

When the pandemic struck in early 2020, Susan Furness, an alternative strategist and self-confessed digital nomad, was staying at Studio One hotel in Dubai. It was meant to be a short stay, just to get a project over the line. But the arrangement soon turned into a long one as Covid dug in its heels.

Anyone in her place would have perhaps flinched at the thought of staying in a hotel while the world was locked up but for Susan it was a blessing in disguise. Since 2017, she had anyway traded a ‘traditional’ or ‘classic’ home living to embrace a “vocational commitment to business and life”, by giving up her villa in Al Nakheel. But the long-term reality of Covid further changed her definition of home. “I was fast to embrace the #WFA (work from anywhere) rule and ‘nomad’id’ my way to Ras Al Khaimah where the big ocean, skies, sunset and mountains beckoned,” she laughs.

Anchored in RAK, she then negotiated for an extended stay in Studio One which has been functioning as her home in Dubai for over two years