The pace of growth in travel and tourism in Arabia is happening at such a pace that hospitality leaders have found themselves asking some fundamental questions: who is going to serve all of these travellers? How quickly can they be trained? And are there enough pilots to fly all these people to the Middle East?

Questions about basic manpower have been raised recently at a series of conferences in Dubai on hotel investment in Arabia and the Arabian travel market. Dubai has become skilled at developing hotels, airports and other hospitality infrastructure at breakneck speed. It sets astonishing targets for passenger arrivals, hotel room construction and GDP, and beats them. But is the speed too fast for it to develop the workforce required to service all of this development?