Hey Ladies, Come to Dubai!

Opinion from the Center

You can travel the world, but nothing comes close to the Persian Coast.

That is, according to Britain’s The Telegraph (Lean Right bias), which published a glowing profile of Dubai a few months ago titled, “Why Dubai is the perfect spot for a female solo traveller.”

Over the course of nearly 1,400 words, April Hutchinson, who is apparently not staffed at the publication and runs a luxury travel media brand of her own, laid out why Dubai is the best getaway for a single woman.

After establishing that one traveller, a 51-year-old healthcare consultant from London, said she feels very safe there, Hutchinson’s off to the races, plugging many of the city’s high-end attractions. From hot air balloon rides to luxury dining, ladies-only pilates, or the rooftop pool at the W Hotel, the column – flush with gorgeous photos of girlies living their best lives – provides no shortage of appeal to a single woman from a dreary island with cash to spend.

The Telegraph’s profile exists for one reason, and one reason only: to give women no pause in considering Dubai for their next holiday. 

But this isn’t some earth-shattering scoop. The Telegraph notes in the byline that the article is “advertiser content” for Visit Dubai, the city’s official tourism body. However, the piece’s layout doesn’t make it glaringly obvious to the average reader that this is the case.

The headline – that Dubai is the “perfect” destination for a solo woman – should jump off the page to anyone with even a mildly critical eye or basic knowledge of laws in the United Arab Emirates or its neighbors.

Though the Emirates brands itself as being one of the more progressive states in the Middle East, and appears to have reformed itself somewhat in recent years, countries in the region are still run quite differently from those in the West. Many things that Westerners – The Telegraph’s target audience – view as bedrock elements of regular social life, like sex, alcohol, or drugs, are subject to far more limitations in the UAE. 

Notable Brits and Westerners Detained in Dubai in Recent Years

In recent years, some visitors found this out the hard way. A quick Google search reveals many such instances from the 2010s, several of which were reported on by The Telegraph itself.

• In 2013, a Norwegian woman claimed she was raped by her colleague, a Sudanese man, while in Dubai. The woman received 16 months in prison for falsely reporting a rape, alcohol consumption, and consensual sex outside marriage. The man was jailed for 13 months for alcohol consumption and consensual sex.
• In 2016, a British woman claimed she was raped by two British men while on holiday in Dubai, and was arrested for having sex outside of marriage. The two men were detained as well, but after a short investigation, the UAE’s government determined there was no sexual assault and the three were released.
• In 2017, a South African man and his Ukrainian fiancée, both in their 20s, visited a doctor in Abu Dhabi when the woman sought treatment for stomach cramps. It was determined that she was pregnant, and the two were detained for having sex outside marriage. After a short investigation, the UAE dropped the charges.
• Later in 2017, a British woman was jailed, sentenced to one year in prison, and deported for having consensual sex after she claimed she was being harassed by her ex-partner.
• In 2018, a Swedish woman who lived and worked in the UK was detained and held in Dubai for over a month after authorities learned she had a complimentary glass of wine on her flight from London.
• In 2019, a British woman who flew to Dubai to attend her ex-husband’s funeral was arrested and faced up to two years in prison after authorities learned she made a negative Facebook comment about her ex-husband and his new wife in 2016. She was let off with a £625 fine and returned to Britain days later.
• In 2021, a British woman faced up to two years in prison for swearing at her Ukrainian flatmate in a WhatsApp message.

While the UAE’s government has shown some goodwill to foreigners in more recent years, vacationers are still venturing into the country without properly knowing or respecting its rules and facing consequences as a result.

• In October 2024, a UK man was arrested and faced up to two years in prison for a review he left on a former employer’s page that authorities perceived as slanderous. He was allowed to return to the UK in December 2024.
• In December 2024, an 18-year-old Brit was jailed for having consensual sex with a 17-year-old, also British, while on vacation. After being sentenced to a year in prison, he was pardoned and returned to the UK in July of this year.
• In September, two weeks after The Telegraph published its feature, a 24-year-old British woman was sentenced to 25 years in prison for doing cocaine at a party in October 2024.

This list is not exhaustive.

Should Sponsored Content be Free of Journalistic Ethics?

The UAE is quite transparent about its laws. And The Telegraph, primarily a journalistic outlet, is transparent that its Dubai content serves the commercial interests of the city’s leadership. But does that mean all journalistic principles should be thrown out the window?

Hutchinson’s feature came amid a flurry of sponsored content for The Telegraph. From August 7 to September 3, Sarah Hedley Hymers published 12 articles sponsored by Visit Dubai. Hymers, a Dubai-based “Destination Expert” at The Telegraph, has published 61 articles with the publication since late 2018, all of which are profiles of Dubai. 

Only 17 of Hymers’ pieces are marked as sponsored content, but The Telegraph has published many other features sponsored by Visit Dubai, including 2023’s byline-less “Why Dubai is a safe choice for female group travel” and 2025’s “Why Dubai is the perfect hub for digital nomads” by “Travel Writer” Scott Campbell.

Readers should not view these sponsored works as journalism, but as a more arousing, high-brow form of marketing. Still, the aforementioned mishaps are more than your run-of-the-mill vacation inconveniences. One would think that even with sponsored content, some context on the UAE, its laws, and culture would be worthwhile.

The editors at Forbes (Center), which published strikingly similar articles to Hutchinson’s in 2023 and 2025 but didn’t mark either as sponsored content, appeared to believe so. 

In a 2023 article promoting Dubai as the best destination for “solo women,” Forbes wrote: “InsureMyTrip cautions that it’s essential to research Dubai’s laws and strict dress code before visiting, because women are required to dress modestly in public, and rulebreaking could lead to imprisonment and deportation.” The 2025 article also included a very similar statement.

You can’t fault Dubai’s tourism board for promoting itself through a paid partnership. It’s not their responsibility to inform travelers of their nation’s laws. Travelers visiting a foreign country should always research its laws and customs before visiting, and it’s hard to feel bad for those who recklessly disobey.

Still, one would think a publication like The Telegraph should have at least two cents' worth of journalistic instinct and include a basic, informative statement as Forbes did. But it didn’t, and as a result is underserving and misleading its readers yet again.

Corporate Sponsorship in Mainstream Media

The Telegraph’s partnership with Dubai is far from the only prominent example of transparently influenced coverage in mainstream Western media. Several publications that millions of Americans read regularly have authored reports in partnership with major corporations or nongovernmental organizations.

For years, The Hill (Center) has published reports “Presented by Lockheed Martin,” and appears to still do so regularly. Examples include this May 2022 report about the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy or this September 2025 report on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s management of the military. Such articles are difficult to find with online search engines, but AllSides team members have noticed the “Presented by Lockheed Martin” label on several articles from The Hill in recent years.

As reported by Responsible Statecraft (Center) in 2021, Politico (Lean Left) also has a history of receiving sponsorship from Lockheed. 

In early 2024, Semafor (Lean Left) teamed up with Microsoft and OpenAI for its “Signals” program. Semafor said the collaboration would help its journalists “offer readers diverse, sophisticated perspectives and insights on the biggest stories in the world as they develop.” 

Articles produced as part of the partnership were clearly marked as being in conjunction with Microsoft at the top of the article. At its inception, Reuters (Center) reported that the financial details of the partnership were not made public. It’s unclear whether the partnership is still active, though the label was regularly encountered by AllSides team members when reading Semafor, and the publication posts news about both companies often.

Then there’s The Guardian (Left), whose whole identity and fundraising pleas revolve around claiming itself as the antidote to corporate “billionaire” media, despite its £1.24 billion backing. Earlier this year, an AllSides team member spotted an article from the publication that criticized President Donald Trump’s climate policies and was “supported by” Hungarian billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. (The Guardian has since changed the article to say it is supported by “theguardian.org,” which lists Open Society Foundations as a “partner.”)

An AllSides team member screenshotted The Guardian’s Open Society Foundations support label before it was changed.

Don’t End Up In Jail

Most content published by outlets of such mainstream standing as The Telegraph, The Hill, or The Guardian is not sponsored content. But even when such content is clearly labeled, the average reader might not notice it at first glance or at all. Furthermore, discovering which outlets have published articles sponsored by large corporations or NGOs solely by retroactively using search engines appears to be difficult, if not impossible.

As people whose job is to read and scrutinize mainstream media daily, these are just some partnerships a few of us at AllSides have noticed recently.

But just like you should probably do a bit of reading on the laws of the United Arab Emirates before planning a vacation there, you should also research who funds the words you read in mainstream media, whether the publication is transparent about it or not. 

Failure to do so could land you a stint in media bias jail – and unlike the UAE, where in many recent instances the government has shown benevolence to detained visitors – from there, there’s no such thing as a swift deportation.

Andy Gorel is a News and Social Media Editor at AllSides. He has a Center bias.

This piece was reviewed by Malayna Bizier, News Analyst and Social Media Editor (Right), and Evan Wagner, News Editor and Product Manager (Lean Left).