Mauibaby2008

One night my friend and I decided to go out for a night in Dubai. We were just walking the streets by some clubs and we saw a group of ten or more African women that were clearly trying to sell themselves to us (this was near a Hilton)-

I am positive they were prostitutes, so I ask, how is this possible considering how strict the UAE can be on unmarried tourists sharing hotel rooms??

What penalties do these women face- as the risk-reward doesn't seem worth it

mcgahat

I am going to guess it is accepted as long as it is kept in the foreign hotel area. When my wife and I were in Dubai we noticed a few ladies in the bar area of the hotel that seemed open to making new friends and seemed to have no fewer. Probably just need to pay kick back to police.

stimpy

I think you are mistaking Dubai for Riyadh. There are no restrictions on unmarried tourists sharing hotel rooms in Dubai. At least not for non-Muslims. I've been going to Dubai since 1997 and there's always prostitutes about. As long as they don't cause trouble they are clearly tolerated.

IAN-UK

An awful lot goes on in Dubai Things not tolerated in neighbouring emirates are over-looked: just don't frighten the horses.

You don't turn yourself into a tourism hotspot without sacrificing some of the straight lace..

rankourabu

No kidding.
Even in Tehran, there are no restrictions on unmarried tourists - I dont understand how one can think this would be the case in Dubai.

Sixth Freedom

From time to time the authorities might deport some of the ladies for form's sake.

Otherwise they know which way their bread is buttered and that were it not for the ladies they would lose out on a significant share of travel and tourism revenue.

GUWonder

The hotel owners want the revenue and don't want to lose customers -- including the prostitutes, many of whom are paying a discounted rate but still paying for room and F&B, often with a roommate to keep costs down amongst other things.

So as long as the police aren't called in to resolve a disturbance involving a prostitute at a hotel, the police don't enforce the law because their bosses' bosses have social and business ties to maintain and sustain that also involve the same as other hotel owners.

Keep in mind that the UAE is a small country where it's citizens are a small minority of the population. This has come with relationships amongst the clans/tribes and even intra-family being so interwoven and yet sensitive that nationals have to walk on egg shells when dealing with other nationals because it's sort of hard to keep track of whose cousin just married the bosses' sister and who is the bosses' favorite spouse and kids at the moment. The consequence is that the lower level police aren't going to rock the boat and the upper level authorities want peace in the house and don't want to risk shattering the peace amongst the extended relatives by depriving a group of its national of money from investments unless they really feel they have to do something.

stimpy

Very good assessment and quite true I can say. Except for one tiny detail. The girls themselves rarely are paying guests at the hotel they are working in. They are there to make money, not spend it.

csdf

Yes, there are. They're just not usually enforced. Same with alcohol licences: the only way to consume alcohol legally in the UAE is if you are in possession of an alcohol licence. The only people who are allowed to apply for licences are UAE residents, which means that every single tourist who consumes alcohol is breaking the law. As with the room sharing issue, the only time you see these types of law enforced is when the tourist did something else to annoy someone (e.g. get in a fight).

stimpy

An unknown restriction that isn't enforced is not a restriction. Yes of course if you do something horrible you will get in trouble. But it has to be really bad like this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...the-beach.html

99.999% of non-Islamic tourists in Dubai do not encounter any such restrictions, nor are they even aware of restrictions. Thus I maintain there are no real restrictions.

mecabq

+1 A lot of people post things like, unmarried non-Muslim couples are not allowed to share a hotel room, taken from internet forums like the one quoted above that are not official. I have asked someone to post an actual law, to no avail. It may exist, but we should remember that there really isn't much of a rule of law there, anyway, so I agree with your interpretation.

Same with the point about needing an alcohol license. This may be an actual regulation, but do you really think that every hotel in Dubai would risk losing its license by not checking for customers' alcohol permits? The fact that they don't seem to worry about this leads me to conclude that, de facto, there is no such regulation.

Prostitution is less of a gray area, but, as others have noted, they obviously tolerate it in a somewhat delicate balancing act.

GUWonder

The UAE has no way to reliably check most of its visitors' marital status. Last names being different means close to nothing -- increasingly so in OECD countries and historically more generally in Muslim-majority countries where it has not been general tradition to change family name at time of religious marriage.

Religious marriages are not invalid in the UAE even if the visitors' home states deny they are valid. So what document is the UAE going to check for marital status? Nothing reliable or necessary, and it's no problem unless you make a bad scene or step on the wrong national's toe.

muscat

It is illegal to drink alcohol in the UAE without a licence and also on planes. There's been a few cases recently of passengers on Emirates flying in to Dubai causing trouble due to alcohol consumption. They have all been charged with assault and "drinking illegally".
http://www.thenational.ae/uae/courts...nt-court-hears
http://www.thenational.ae/uae/courts...ai-court-hears

mecabq

So Emirates, a highly-visible government-owned company, willfully violates the black-letter law of the UAE every day? There is no logic to this. I can only surmise that Emirates (and every other hospitality provider in the country) has a wink-and-nod agreement with the government not to enforce the law, and/or the law on drinking is not actually that explicit and/or there is really no rule of law anyway -- which leads to the conclusion that there is essentially no such prohibition for any practical purpose.

They can trot out the "drinking illegally" as a pretext to pile on when someone commits a more legitimate offence, which seems to be the case every time we hear about this supposed law being broken. But has anyone ever been charged with "drinking illegally" absent more serious aggravating circumstances?

csdf

You're trying to apply western logic to Middle Eastern thinking. In the West, something is either illegal, or it isn't. Here, something is illegal if somebody decides that is, and it isn't if they decide that it isn't. Also, you're trying to find written references to laws...this isn't the right part of the world to expect things to be clearly spelled out in black and white. On a monthly basis those of us who live here come up against a new law, or interpretation of the law, that is not written down anywhere and we've long since given up trying to find out where it's written down...

But anyway, back on topic. Prostitution is illegal; drinking without a licence is illegal. But generally, unless you screw up in some other way, you're unlikely to be prosecuted for doing these things, particularly if you're a tourist.