Gulf states are booming due to record oil prices - yet the region's fastest rising economic star is Dubai, where oil reserves are actually dwindling.
The Emirates, a popular destination for West Midlands business and leisure travellers, has reinvented itself as a hub for trade, finance, property and tourism, and along the way has come to embody hopes of a bright future for the Gulf even if its oil wells run dry.
The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part, has gone from being one the most oil-dependent Gulf economies in 1980 to one of the least dependent.
People returning to Dubai after a few years' absence say they hardly recognise the place as towering office blocks, housing estates, shopping malls and business parks spring out of the desert.
Forty part-built apartment towers - the world's biggest single-phase housing project - loom over Jumeirah beach, along which tribesmen would lead their camels until only two decades ago.
Advertising campaigns revel in superlatives to draw the eyes of the world to Dubai: the world's tallest tower, the biggest man-made islands - including 'The World' (pictured), the richest horse race, the only underwater hotel, the only seven star hotel, a ski slope in the desert.
Even with record oil prices, the weight of the energy sector in the UAE has been falling. The OPEC member's economy grew 7.4 per cent in real terms last year but the oil and gas sector expanded by only 2.9 per cent, according to government figures.
Dubai's capital market is surging as investors plough money into industries that hope to compete globally thanks to cheap labour and energy, low-tax free trade zones and an ideal location at the crossroads of Asia and Europe.
Dubai's fast growing Emirates airline has not been slow to capitalise on the increase in traffic this has generated. Earlier this year it launched a second daily flight from Birmingham International Airport and has already hinted at the possibility of a third.
Currently the airline operates Boeing 777-200 airliners out of Birmingham. But if the demand is there, Tim Clark, Emirates' president, said it could consider flying the larger Boeing 777-300 Extended Range version of the airliner, able to carry 423 passengers in a business/economy configuration.
However, he believes Birmingham Airport's terminal facilities are now "creaking at at the seams" with departure lounges designed to house just 100 people - far too small for today's requirements.
Zahed Chowdhury, head of research at HSBC in Dubai, said the country was " expanding into areas where they have a competitive advantage".
Similar experiments are in progress the length of the Gulf.
Abu Dhabi, which still has plentiful oil reserves, is trying to extract more value from its energy reserves by investing in petrochemicals and fertilisers. Poorer Emirate Ras al-Khaimah is finding a niche in cement and pharmaceuticals, Bahrain in finance, Oman in tourism.
The change of tack came in the early 1990s, when weak oil prices exposed a worrying dependence on crude oil revenue and left some governments struggling to cope with the demands of a surging population. They decided that an expanded, competitive private sector was the only way to head off a longer-term employment crisis.
"In the previous oil boom there was a tendency on the part of governments to embark on very large infrastructure projects that turned out to be unproductive," said Daniel Hanna, Middle East economist for Standard Chartered Bank. "I think that's clearly not happened this time."
He estimates that oil revenue generated in the Gulf will grow to $230 billion (#128.4 billion) this year from $180 billion (#100.5 billion) in 2004, but the amount of money invested in markets outside the region has remained almost the same.
The reason: the extra funds are being ploughed into domestic economies through private investments or local capital markets.
The combined value of the Gulf region's stock markets has gone up 400 per cent since 2004.
The value of trades on the Dubai Financial Market rocketed to 204 billion UAE dirhams (#31 billion) in the January to August period from 51 billion dirhams in all of
The market's value has grown 87 per cent in eight months.
But doubts persist over whether that flurry of investment will leave in its wake an economy that remains viable if oil exports go into decline.
Some analysts say governments need to move quicker to beef up corporate disclosure and market transparency to give surging capital markets more solid foundations.
"If you fail to do that then the liquidity in the private sector that stood by you in the beginning will walk out the door at the drop of a hat," said Mr Chowdhury.
While Dubai's role as the region's dominant trading hub seems assured, its other niche as a haven for Western visitors depends on the liberal environment it offers in a region of conservative social values.
Dubai aims to triple annual tourist numbers to 15 million by 2010, but that goal could prove impossible if the freewheeling Emirate falls victim to an attack from a radical Islamist group, as have Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Tensions in the labour market are far from being resolved, with governments failing to integrate their citizens into the private sector because they lack skills or motivation.
In a recent report, the International Monetary Fund said increasing unemployment among UAE nationals is likely to pose a serious problem for the country and that more jobs are needed for the growing national labour force.
The government has boosted training and offered incentives to encourage citizens to take up private sector jobs, but at the end of last year expatriates still accounted for 91.5 per cent of total employment in the country.
Western observers say free markets across the Gulf cannot survive for long without political freedoms and urge more democracy and freedom of speech. Millions of manual workers from Asia do not set down roots in the Gulf because their hosts see them merely as a source of cheap labour and withhold the right to vote or even to move jobs without the approval of a sponsor.
"Things like labour law, like freedom of speech, these will become an increasingly relevant part of the overall mix that defines quality of life, property prices and which businesses want to move here," said Mr Chowdhury.
