Dubai: When some of the UAE’s top business leaders gather for lunch on the 33rd floor of the World Trade Centre on Thursday, it’s sure to be a long stroll down memory lane for most.
The World Trade Club, Dubai’s oldest private pad that’s stood the test of time and witnessed the emirate undergo a giant makeover, turns 25. A perfect occasion for guests – that include Guy Guillemard, the first GM of Shaikh Rashid Tower and Maurice Flanagan, the ex-vice chairman of Emirates – to roll back the years at a very special bash.
When the club opened on February 27, 1989, it was not only the most exclusive of settings but a ‘first-of-its-kind’ in the country, if not the region.
Opened on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Dubai World Trade Centre, it was also a power-packed platform for networking for the country’s influential leaders, businessmen, corporates and industrialists.
“In the late 80s and early 90s, it was very much the place to be,” says Francis Matthew, Editor-at-Large, Gulf News, sister publication of XPRESS.
“In those days there were only three or four big luxury hotels and only a few social clubs but no private club of this stature. It offered a multicultural setting only a few offered back in the day and it was meant for some of the country’s who’s who,” he recollects of his early days in the country.
Offering panoramic views of the Dubai skyline from what was the city’s first and tallest high-rise, the World Trade Club boasted a landmark luxurious private setting. A fine-dining restaurant offering international cuisine and an adjoining cocktail lounge providing an unobstructed view of the Arabian Gulf and the Dubai skyline remain two of its star attractions.
It was also the place for the city’s business community to host high-level meetings or social gatherings. Of the several events that Gulf News organised there, Matthew particularly remembers a lunch in 1995 to announce the introduction of the re-sized broadsheet, its pages shrunk for the first time, by four centimetres!