Comments on The Burd Report: You want a fountain - this is a fountain

Dubai International Airport handled 18 million pas...

2008-06-13T21:11:00.000-04:00

Dubai International Airport handled 18 million passengers in 2003, and handled 21.7 million in 2004, and handled 24 million in 2005. If the trend continues it should be approximately 35 million in 2008. I was unable to obtain the numbers of those who arrived by camel.

1000 per hour seems a low ball. Toronto Transit mo...

2008-06-13T18:12:00.000-04:00

1000 per hour seems a low ball. Toronto Transit moves more people than that during rush hour.
Sports stadiums hold tens of thousands and they can all exit in an hour. Over 28,000,000 passengers passed through Toronto airport in 2004 and it is being designed to handle 50,000,000 per year by 2020. Where do they all come from? Where do they go?

10,000,000 visitors to a marvel of engineering is exceedingly reasonable.

This is the sort of project that turns me on. This sort of thing is when human beings are at their best. A 500-foot finger of fountain in the face of mediocrity.

Only a dribble of intelligence would metaphor such stats with Wal-Martyrdom

Even in Dubai people throw abut numbers with aband...

2008-06-13T15:15:00.000-04:00

Even in Dubai people throw abut numbers with abandon. If the fountain really did attract 10 million tourists annually this would be about 1,000 new tourists an hour for the whole year ( 24/7 etc). Where are they all coming from and where would they put them.
Perhaps the closest might be there are 10 million visitors to Dubai who might or might not look at the fountain ( perhaps they might not even leave the airport but be on stopovers).

It seems that all tourist authorities conjure up numbers up with no real reason. ( just like Wal-Mart and all its consultants).