How to Brief a Dubai DMC and Get a Usable Quote

A reservations team cannot price a stay until it knows which airport, which board basis and how many rooms. Every missing field is a round trip, and two round trips across time zones is two working days gone before anyone has looked at inventory. Meanwhile your client is being quoted by somebody else.

The second failure mode is worse, because it looks like success. A quote arrives fast and complete, priced against an assumption you never made: twin rooms when the client wanted doubles, a DXB transfer when the group lands at Al Maktoum, half board read as lunch when the client meant dinner. You find out at confirmation, or at check-in. Both are re-quotes, and the second one is a complaint.

Eleven fields cover almost every leisure and small-group enquiry into Dubai. None of them takes long to write; all of them take a day to chase.

1. Passengers, and what kind

Adults, children and infants counted separately, with each child's age on the travel date rather than at the time of booking — age bands for hotel occupancy and attraction entry are read on the day the client walks in. Add the passenger type in one word: family, honeymoon, corporate incentive, multi-generational. It changes the room mix before it changes anything else.

2. Dates, and where the flexibility actually sits

Give exact arrival and departure dates and the number of nights, then say which end can move and by how much. "Flexible" on its own is not usable. "Fixed arrival, departure can move by up to two nights" is, and it lets a DMC route around a demand spike instead of quoting into one.

Dubai's calendar is unusually date-driven, and some of it is not fixed in advance. National Day falls on 2–3 December under Cabinet Resolution No. 27 of 2024, which also provides that a public holiday cannot be moved if it coincides with another or falls at the weekend. The Islamic holidays are different: determined by moon sighting and confirmed only shortly beforehand, so an Eid programme is planned against an estimate. During Ramadan, UAE labour law reduces working hours by two hours a day for Muslim and non-Muslim employees alike, which moves supplier response times as well as restaurant operations. Our Dubai events calendar sets the demand picture out month by month.

One scheduling detail catches overseas desks out. The federal government and most emirates work Monday to Thursday plus a half day on Friday, with a Saturday and Sunday weekend. Sharjah is the exception — Government of Sharjah employees work a four-day week, Monday to Thursday, with a three-day Friday-to-Sunday weekend. If your programme depends on a Sharjah government approval, that changes when a reply is possible.

3. Flights, terminals and which airport

Flight numbers both ways, scheduled arrival and departure times in local time, and the terminal as printed on the ticket. Give the flight number even if you are unsure of the terminal — carriers move between terminals and a single airline can operate from more than one, so the number is what a ground team can verify. What you must never leave to inference is the airport.

Dubai has two. Dubai International (DXB) sits in Al Garhoud, roughly 4.7 km east of the city centre, with Terminals 1, 2 and 3 — Terminal 3 being the Emirates hub terminal. Al Maktoum International (DWC) is a separate airport in the deep south by Jebel Ali and Dubai South, around 37 km southwest of the centre; it opened to passengers on 27 October 2013 and remains a much smaller passenger operation, predominantly freight plus limited scheduled and charter services. A quote priced from the wrong one is wrong by up to an hour in each direction.

Two details worth carrying. Dubai Airports states there are metro connections from DXB Terminals 1 and 3 — Terminal 2 has no station, so a Terminal 2 arrival is a vehicle movement whatever the client assumed. And a group arriving on more than one carrier can land at more than one terminal, which is two meeting points and two representatives. Say so in the brief and it gets resourced.

4. Hotel category, area, and the exact property name

State three things and say which is binding: the category you sell, a shortlist of named properties or a "similar to" reference, and the area. Agents assume the DMC knows which of the three is negotiable. It does not. If the client bought a beach holiday, area is binding and property is not; if the client saw a specific resort on Instagram, the reverse.

Name properties precisely, because Dubai renames things. The St. Regis Dubai, The Palm is a different hotel from the property that opened in 2015 as The St. Regis Dubai, Al Habtoor City, became Habtoor Palace, LXR Hotels & Resorts in August 2021, left LXR and Hilton on 1 May 2024 and now trades independently as Al Habtoor Palace. Burj Al Arab Jumeirah is now Jumeirah Burj Al Arab after the 2024 group rebrand. Deira Islands is now Dubai Islands, which changes two hotel addresses without changing the hotels. A brief that says "the St. Regis" is asking someone to guess.

5. Board basis and room configuration

Write board basis in words the first time, not initials: room only, bed and breakfast, half board, full board, all inclusive. Then remove the ambiguity that survives the initials. Does half board mean lunch or dinner? Are children's meals included, and to what age? Does the client expect drinks with dinner? Half board is the single most frequently mis-assumed line in a Dubai quote, because resort half board and city-hotel half board are not the same product.

Room configuration needs the same discipline. Give the number of rooms and the room type, the bedding — twin or double, and they are not interchangeable — who shares with whom, and whether a third or fourth occupant is on an extra bed, a rollaway or a sofa bed, because maximum occupancy is set per room type and not per booking. If you need rooms next to each other, say adjoining; if you need a door between them, say connecting. Only one of those lets a parent cross without going into the corridor.

For anything group-sized the rooming list carries all of this, and its timing is governed by the release date on the contract rather than by the arrival date — a mechanic our DMC guide sets out in full. The point for a brief is that the earlier provisional names go in, the more of the booking is still fixable.

6. Inclusions — and which of them are must-have

Send two lists, not one: contractual must-haves that the client has already been sold, and nice-to-haves that can flex on price or timing. A DMC that cannot tell them apart quotes the whole list at the highest specification, and the total comes back above your bracket for reasons neither of you can see.

Name the actual product rather than the category. "Desert safari" is at least four different products with four different vehicle standards, and shared safaris run on fixed pickup windows, so a group large enough to want its own timing is a different booking entirely — from around twenty passengers it generally justifies a dedicated convoy and its own camp table. "City tour" is a private vehicle at your dates and pace, or a seat on a scheduled coach that leaves at a set time.

Flag anything with a booking window or an operating-status question in the brief itself, because those lines cannot be fixed later. Ain Dubai requires booking at least 72 hours ahead and no more than 45 days ahead, which rules it out both for a late addition and for an itinerary locked a year out. Museum of the Future announced a closure from mid-September 2026, reopening indicated for the first quarter of 2027. The Palm Jumeirah Monorail carries a notice on its own site that service is temporarily suspended until further notice due to maintenance, checked 29 July 2026 — so crescent movements are by road, and an itinerary line reading "monorail to Atlantis" is not deliverable today.

7. Budget, in your own currency

Give a bracket, name the currency, and say whether the figure is your selling price to the client or your buying budget — those are different numbers and a DMC cannot infer which one you sent. Say whether it is per person or total, and what it must cover: land-only, visa, excursions. Agents withhold budget believing it invites a higher quote; in practice the desk guesses the category, guesses wrong, and you spend a day re-briefing. State which currency you want the quote issued in too, since that decides who carries the exchange movement between quotation and payment.

8. Visas: nationality, not nationality-ish

List each passenger's passport nationality and, separately, their country of residence — residence changes the answer for many travellers and is routinely omitted. GCC citizens do not need a visa. British citizens can get a visitor or tourist visa free of charge on arrival, valid for up to 90 days over a 180-day period from first entry, continuous or split across visits. Beyond those, the UAE federal portal does not itself publish the visa-on-arrival nationality list, so eligibility is confirmed per passport before you sell rather than looked up in a table on a blog.

Where a Dubai-sponsored visa is needed, GDRFA Dubai issues the single-entry tourism visa for 30 or 60 days and states a 48-hour processing time. Its documents are a personal photograph and a passport copy valid for at least six months, plus an identity card from the country of origin for applicants from Iraq, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Its conditions include a travel ticket to continue the journey or leave the UAE, and medical insurance valid in the UAE. That onward-ticket condition is the one most often missed at briefing stage. Take names from the passport rather than from an email signature — the requirement is a passport copy, and whatever that copy says is what the application carries.

If the point of entry is an emirate other than Dubai, the federal route applies instead: ICP issues visit visas in single and multiple-entry form for 30, 60 or 90 days, the holder must enter within the entry permit's 60-day validity from issuance, and ICP may extend provided total stay does not exceed 120 days. Be specific about which authority you are relying on — a Dubai-sponsored client cannot obtain 90 days from GDRFA.

9. Dietary, medical and accessibility requirements

Dietary needs belong in the brief as specifics rather than labels, per passenger, with the meal occasions attached. "Vegetarian" covers a wide range in the markets that send the most volume into Dubai: state whether eggs are acceptable, whether onion and garlic are excluded, whether a separate preparation area is required, and whether it applies to the desert camp dinner and the dhow cruise buffet as well as the hotel. A cruise operator listing an international buffet with vegetarian options is not the same as a guaranteed Jain-compliant meal.

Medication is a lead-time item, not a comfort item. The UK FCDO states that approval must be obtained in advance from the UAE Ministry of Health for controlled medication, that applications are normally processed within five working days, and that some medicines prescribed or sold over the counter elsewhere are classed as controlled substances in the UAE. Guidance runs to three months' supply as a visitor, one month where the medication is on the approval list, with the prescription and original labelled packaging carried. Five working days is longer than many visa turnarounds, so it belongs in the first email.

For accessibility, describe the equipment rather than the condition: folding manual chair or powered chair, its weight and folded dimensions, whether the passenger can transfer to a vehicle seat, and whether a companion travels. RTA operates a People of Determination category among its official Dubai taxi vehicle types, but publishes no vehicle specification, ramp detail or wheelchair capacity on that service card — so an accessible vehicle is confirmed per booking, never assumed from a category name. The same applies to hotel rooms: ask for the room's own specification rather than the label.

10. Guides: language, and what "English-speaking" means

State the commentary language, and separately whether the driver needs it too. Multilingual shared touring is normal at scale in Dubai — Arabian Adventures publishes shared scheduled tours in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in six languages — but that is one operator's published position, not a market-wide guarantee, so guide language is confirmed per booking. If you need the same guide across several days, say so: continuity is a resourcing decision made at contracting, not a preference raised on day two.

11. Who you are, and what you need back

Your agency name, the booking contact and a second contact, your time zone, the deadline you are working to, and whether you want a quote or a held option. That last one is the field agents most often leave out and most often need. A quote is a price; a held option is inventory with a date on it. Ask for what you actually want.

Dubai's two airports sit at opposite ends of the city, so airport and area are one decision rather than two. The table below is our own ground team's planning range, and it is the reason a brief that names the airport gets a better hotel recommendation as well as a better transfer price.

Drive time and vehicle access are two different questions, and a brief should answer both. If the itinerary includes Al Fahidi, the Marina promenade or a frond address on the Palm, say whether the group is travelling by coach — several of Dubai's best-selling districts have no coach circulation at all, and the fix is a set-down point plus a short walk rather than a different hotel. Our DMC guide carries the district-by-district set-down guidance.

Paste this into your enquiry and fill it in. Fields you genuinely do not know yet should say "not confirmed" rather than being deleted — an explicit gap is quotable, a silent one is not.

1. 01Agency, booking contact, second contact, time zone, and the date you need the quote by.
2. 02Passengers: adults / children with ages on the travel date / infants. Passenger type in one word.
3. 03Dates: arrival, departure, number of nights. Which end can move, and by how many nights.
4. 04Flights: inbound and outbound flight numbers, scheduled local times, terminal as ticketed, and the airport — DXB or DWC.
5. 05Hotel: category, named property or "similar to", area — and which of those three is binding.
6. 06Board basis in words, plus what half board means for this client and whether children's meals are included.
7. 07Rooms: number, room type, bedding, who shares, extra bed or sofa bed, adjoining or connecting.
8. 08Must-have inclusions, named specifically, with private or shared stated for each.
9. 09Nice-to-have inclusions, listed separately.
10. 10Budget: bracket, currency, per person or total, selling price or buying budget, and what it must cover.
11. 11Passports: nationality and country of residence per passenger, and whether you need us to sponsor the visa.
12. 12Dietary, medical and accessibility requirements per passenger, with the meal occasions they apply to.
13. 13Guide language, and whether the driver needs it too.
14. 14What you want back: a quote, or a held option with a date on it.

A complete brief earns a complete quote, and a complete quote is one you can check line by line. Here is what each line should carry and what its absence usually means.

The single most useful question on receipt is: which of these lines is held, and until when? A lower total with nothing held behind it is not a better price; it is a different product. Two ground partners quoting the same property on the same dates may hold different contract positions, and that difference decides whether your group checks in.

This is the part of the process agents plan for least and use most. As a general rule of trade practice, changes get harder in this order, and the ordering matters more than any individual deadline.

• Correcting a name or a spelling on a rooming list is normally the easiest change, and the earlier the provisional list goes in, the more of it is still correctable.
• Swapping bedding or room type within the same block is usually possible while the block is intact, and becomes a re-booking once rooms have gone back to the hotel.
• Reducing the number of rooms after the contracted release date is not an amendment at all — the inventory has already returned to the supplier, so it is a cancellation of held rooms plus a new request.
• Moving dates re-prices the whole booking, because hotel rates are seasonal and a group moved across a season boundary is a new quote rather than an edit.
• Adding passengers into a week already tight on inventory can be impossible at any notice, whatever the commercial relationship.
• Timed-entry attraction tickets are the least flexible line of all: many are sold against a slot, and some carry both a minimum and a maximum booking window.

One practical habit closes most of the gap: put the release date in your own calendar the day the booking confirms, and work backwards from it rather than forwards from the enquiry. Almost every group that fails at check-in failed on that date weeks earlier.

Forever Journeys Tours LLC is a licensed Dubai destination management company, established in 2016, with the head office in Bur Dubai and branches in Gurgaon, Ahmedabad and Kullu. We handle hotels across the Emirates, DXB and DWC transfers, UAE visa processing, excursions and desert product, yacht charter and MICE programmes end to end.

We do not publish rates, because net rates are contracted per agent and per season. Send the template above and we will come back with net rates, what is held against them, and the release terms attached. If a field is genuinely unknown at enquiry stage, mark it and we will quote around it rather than waiting.