The Champagne corks no longer pop at Dubai’s infamous alcohol-soaked brunches, the blaring flat-screen TVs stand silent in the sheikhdom’s sports bars and the city-state’s pubs have shrink-wrapped their now-idle beer taps.
The skyscraper-studded desert metropolis on the Arabian Peninsula has long been one of the wettest places in the Middle East in terms of alcohol consumption, its bars and licensed restaurants serving tourists, travelers and its vast population of foreign workers.
Up until the COVID-19 pandemic, that is.
With the virus now threatening a crucial source of tax and general revenue for its rulers, Dubai’s two major alcohol distributors have partnered to offer home delivery of beer, spirits and wine, yet another loosening of social mores in the Muslim city-state.
“Luxury hotels and bars have been the worse-impacted within the sector and this had a direct impact on the alcohol consumption ... in the United Arab Emirates,” said Rabia Yasmeen, an analyst for market research firm Euromonitor International.
Maritime and Mercantile International LLC (MMI), a subsidiary of government-owned airline Emirates, and African & Eastern partnered to create a Web site offering home delivery. Its products range from a US$530 bottle of Don Julio 1942 tequila to a US$4.30 bottle of Indian blended whiskey, with beers and wines in between.
Their Web site, legalhomedelivery.com, a nod toward the online bootleggers long operating in the gray margins of Dubai, describes the service as needed “in these unprecedented times.”
The few remaining tourists can use their passports to buy alcohol.
However, residents need an alcohol license, a red plastic card issued by Dubai police that requires annual renewal. Only non-Muslims aged 21 and older can apply for a license — although bartenders in the city rarely check for them before pouring drinks.
Text message alerts give imbibers a predicted delivery time within a few hours, although a crew showed up about six hours early for one delivery on Tuesday, wearing masks and disposable gloves.
Officials at African & Eastern, a private company believed to be at least partially held by the state or affiliated firms, and MMI both acknowledged that the pandemic would likely affect their revenues for the year. Most of their physical stores also remain open, although Dubai now is under a 24-hour lockdown that requires the public to have police permission to go to the grocery store.
“We are in the early days of the service and interest has been high already,” MMI managing director for the United Arab Emirates and Oman Mike Glen told reporters in an e-mailed statement.
Glen and Sean Hennessey, African & Eastern general manager for the United Arab Emirates and Oman, declined to offer any sales statistics.
Hennessey also declined to say who owned African & Eastern.
A push to keep alcohol shops open during the pandemic might be surprising to some, especially as drinking is illegal in the neighboring emirate of Sharjah and the nations of Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
However, alcohol sales have long been a canary in the coal mine — or in this case, the cocktail lounge — for the wider economy of Dubai, one of seven sheikhdoms in the United Arab Emirates.
There is a 50 percent import tax on a bottle of alcohol, as well as an additional 30 percent tax in Dubai on buying from liquor stores.
Dubai Duty Free, which is also government owned, last year sold 9 million cans of beer, 3.1 million whiskey bottles and 1.5 million bottles of wine to those passing through airport terminals.
Duty-free sales, while limited, never require an alcohol license.
Even before the pandemic, lower global energy prices, a 30 percent drop in the city’s real-estate market value and trade war fears have seen employers shed jobs. Dubai is now trying to postpone the Expo 2020 world’s fair to next year, another major blow.
Overall sales of alcohol by volume last year fell sharply to 128.79 million liters, down about 3.5 percent from 133.42 million liters in 2018, Euromonitor’s latest statistics showed.
Last year’s sales were down nearly 9 percent from 2017, which saw 141.51 million liters sold, the data showed.
Those lower sales affect everyone from waitresses to Dubai’s ruling Al Maktoum family, which has worked over decades to make the city a major tourist destination, home to the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.
That weakened economy might prove to be a threat long after the pandemic.
For example, the Middle East’s hotel sector took longer to recover from the Great Recession, Yasmeen said.
Most bars in Dubai are attached to hotels.
Hoping to boost alcohol sales, Dubai last year loosened its liquor laws to allow tourists to purchase alcohol in state-controlled stores.
In 2016, it began allowing alcohol sales during daylight hours in the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a major decision ahead of the annual commemoration coming into Dubai’s winter months crucial for tourism.
The home service also charges 50 Emirati dirhams (US$13.61) per delivery. That is additional revenue for the stores, even as bars and restaurants remain closed.
While some aid groups have sprung up to offer help to out-of-work bartenders elsewhere, there has been no similar measure in the United Arab Emirates, whose waitstaff are from all around the world.
“We do have a long and significant relationship with the on-trade, that we will be looking to support through what is a trying time for all parts of the industry,” Hennessey said in a statement.
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