Just like the casinos in Las Vegas who try to trump the neighbour with wilder and wilder themes, the glitziest city in the Middle East is in a constant flux of luxury expansion

Dubai is everything a brimming bank balance could wish for, and much, much more. This is the city-state that invented seven-star hotels, where opulence is the norm.

Dubai already has shopping malls beyond belief – the Emirates Mall is the current jewel. But before the Farrow and Ball paint has dried on the last one, another billion dollar construction will be even bigger.

Ambition here is endless; it may be 35°C in the shade most of the year, but why shouldn’t visitors be able to ski? The investors wave their magic wand, the construction crew moves in, and quicker than you can say, ‘parallel turn’, Dubai becomes home to the Middle East’s first indoor ski resort.

The third largest indoor slope in the world, Ski Dubai juts out of the Mall of the Emirates – still the largest shopping centre outside the US.

Thirty years ago, Dubai was a small fishing port with ancient souks and markets where people came to dive for pearls or trade gold. The stunning, sail-shaped Burj Al Arab - built on a man-made island – is now Dubai’s icon, but for years the top draw for business has been its oil-rich, tax-free economy. It has become a regional hub for business as well as tourism, because it is regarded as a safe place for multinational companies to base themselves and be within striking distance of the rest of the Middle East.

Some 2,600 companies have bases in a tax-free zone near Dubai’s downtown area, while nearby Internet City hosts regional offices for Microsoft, Dell, Siemens, Oracle and IBM. More than 80 percent of Dubai’s 1.5 million residents are from overseas, mainly Britain, India, Iran and Lebanon.

Dubai is recognised as one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. Last year, the economy grew by almost 17 percent – four times faster than that of the United States and twice as fast as China’s. Real estate now accounts for over 10 percent of the United Arab Emirates’s GDP, even though Dubai has far less oil wealth than the other six UAE states.

Transforming this 25-mile coastal strip of desert in the Persian Gulf into a world city has been a remarkable achievement, not to mention a miracle of civil engineering. It is like Singapore on steroids – new parts of town mushroom here within a matter of months.

There are now 30,000 hotel rooms, over 80,000 private properties, 30 shopping malls serviced by 5 million visitors a year. The airport hosts 100 airlines and 145 separate routes, while the handling capacity is being tripled to 60 million passengers a year.

As entrepreneur, Brian Scudder puts it: “Dubai isn’t hamstrung by the same bureaucratic processes that affect other places. There’s masses of liquidity and it’s a tax-free environment. The mentality is very ambitious, there is little government intervention and although it’s very cut-throat, it’s very efficient in getting things done.”

Fancy another flutter on a luxury apartment overlooking the Gulf, anyone?