How many days do you need in Dubai?
Here is the answer before the argument: Dubai is a four or five day city. Three if you are passing through. Six if you are adding Abu Dhabi properly. After that you are not extending a Dubai trip, you are starting a different one, and the honest move is to cross a border or go into the mountains.
We know how that sounds coming from a company that makes money selling nights. It costs us bookings and we say it anyway, because the client who comes home from four excellent days plans the next trip with us and the client who spent nine days running out of things to do does not.
What Dubai actually contains
The city has four things worth your days, and they are smaller than the marketing suggests.
The old city. The creek, the abras, Al Fahidi, Al Shindagha, the gold and spice souks, Deira. This is the best part of Dubai and it is roughly two days of proper walking. Most visitors give it half a morning. See old Dubai in two days.
The modern city. The tower, the fountain, the Museum of the Future, the marina, the beach, the malls as shelter. One good day, two if you are stretching.
The food. Not a day in itself, but it changes the shape of every evening and it is one of the genuine reasons to be here.
What is outside the city. The desert, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Hatta, Jebel Jais, the east coast. This is where the extra days go, and it is why a seven day trip works and a seven day city trip does not.
Add those up honestly and you get four to five days. That is not a slight on Dubai. Four excellent days is a good holiday.
Three days
The stopover, and the shape we build more often than any other.
Three nights splits a long flight to Asia, gives you the creek and the old town in one full day, the modern city in another, one desert evening and two dinners worth remembering. It does not outstay itself and it arrives home feeling like a bonus rather than a compromise.
The mistake with three days is trying to fit the observation deck, the aquarium, the mall, the beach, the desert and the old city into them. You will spend most of the trip in a car between districts. Pick two of those and do them properly.
Three days is also the right answer if the Gulf is genuinely not what you came for and you are on your way somewhere else. See a Gulf stopover and three weeks in Asia.
Five days
The first visit done properly, and our default.
Five days buys the old city with time in it, a full day in the modern city, a night in the desert or a night in Abu Dhabi, and one day left deliberately empty. That last one is not padding. It is the day your trip stops being a schedule.
Five is also the point at which we stop needing to cut. Everything genuinely worth doing in Dubai fits into five days without a single rushed morning. This is Dubai and Abu Dhabi in 5 days, the itinerary we build most often on this desk.
Seven days
Seven days works, but only if at least two of them leave the city.
The versions that work:
Dubai plus Abu Dhabi plus the desert. Two nights in Abu Dhabi rather than a day trip, which gives you the Grand Mosque without the drive back, the Louvre, Qasr Al Watan and the Saadiyat beaches. A night in a desert camp. See old Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi in 6 days for the culture-heavy version.
Dubai plus the mountains and the east coast. Hatta, Jebel Jais at around 6,345 feet (1,934 m), Fujairah and the diving, and the Musandam inlets across the Omani border. This is a genuinely different landscape and most visitors have no idea it is ninety minutes away. See desert and mountains in 7 days.
The version that does not work is seven days entirely inside Dubai. By day five you are visiting attractions because they are there, and the trip flattens.
Fourteen days
At a fortnight, Dubai is no longer the destination. It is the front or back end of one.
The route we recommend most is Dubai and Oman: three or four nights in Dubai, then Muscat, Nizwa, Jebel Akhdar, the Wahiba Sands and the coast. Oman does landscape, old towns, forts, mountains and empty desert better than the UAE and costs less per day. Dubai does the short comfortable break and the food better. Together they are the best fortnight in the region. See Dubai and Oman in 14 days and the argument in the best two-week route through the Gulf.
The other fourteen day shape that works is Dubai at both ends of a longer Asia trip. Three nights on the way out, two on the way back, with India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Thailand or Vietnam in the middle. The flight network makes this nearly free in time.
What we will not build is fourteen days in the UAE. We have been asked and we have declined.
The comparison, plainly
| Days | What it is | What you get | What you miss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 to 3 | Stopover | Old city or modern city, one desert evening, two good dinners | Abu Dhabi, the mountains, any sense of pace |
| 4 to 5 | First visit, done properly | Both halves of the city, the desert, one free day, Abu Dhabi as a day or a night | The mountains, the east coast, Oman |
| 6 to 7 | The city plus one region | The above plus Abu Dhabi overnight, or the mountains and the east coast | Oman, the Wahiba, the real desert |
| 10 to 14 | Two countries | Dubai and Oman, or Dubai at both ends of Asia | Nothing. This is the complete version |
| 14 in the UAE alone | We do not build it |
What changes the answer
The month. In February you can walk all day and five days feels generous. In August you are indoors and three days is enough, because the fourth is a mall. See Dubai month by month.
Children. Families need more days for less ground, because the attractions that work for children eat whole days and the heat forces afternoon breaks. Six is a better family number than four. See Dubai with children.
Whether you want a beach holiday. If the answer is yes, the maths changes completely. Dubai as a beach resort with two days of sightseeing is a perfectly good seven or ten day trip, and we build those. It is just not a sightseeing trip and we would rather you knew which one you were booking.
Jet lag and flight times. A lot of arrivals into Dubai land between midnight and 4am. That first day is not a full day and we do not plan one into it.
Related
- Dubai and the Gulf: the complete guide
- The best two-week route through the Gulf
- Old Dubai in two days
- Dubai and Abu Dhabi in 5 days
- All our Gulf trips
