West Ham's Teddy Sheringham and his wife Nicola are regular visitors to the Al Maha desert resort, Michael Owen chooses the Royal Mirage and England relaxed before the 2002 World Cup at the Jumeirah Beach Club.

The Mirage looks out on the 1,000ft Burj al-Arab hotel, which charges non-guests £20 just to look at the towering fish tanks off the lobby. The billowing, sail-shaped hotel is the world's tallest and the landmark of Dubai - but not for much longer. Three miles off the beach, a floating battalion of cranes is finishing work on Dubai's most audacious project.

Palm Jumeirah is one of two giant, palm-tree-shaped islands being built. When complete this year, they will add 100 hotels, 6,000 homes and 75 miles of beach to Dubai. Visible from space, they are the largest man-made islands in the world. Michael Owen and the Beckhams have both bought homes on the islands.

Everyone has come to town. Gordon Ramsay opened a restaurant, Verre, at the Hilton Dubai Creek (£90 for lunch for two, with drinks), Colin Montgomerie designed a golf course and the Schumacher brothers regularly drive buggies in the dunes at Al Maha.

They shop at the gold souk souk, which sells guaranteed 24-carat jewellery at prices a third lower than in the UK - and tax-free. On my visit, I started to see why Dubai proves so popular with footballers. With a limited holiday season, they need and demand top-quality hotels that are safe. There are good beaches, restaurants, shopping and a water park for the children.

It is perfect for busy people who need to unwind with no guilt about avoiding culture - which is just as well, as there is no concert hall, theatre or opera in Dubai. There is a mosque that non-Muslims can visit and a museum, easily seen within an hour.

Several glossy, English-language magazines such as What's On, Time Out and Emirates Woman reflect the outlook. During my visit, What's On listed 29 places for Friday brunch, a very Dubai experience, and devoteed 14 pages to restaurant awards and nightlife on the "Jumeirah Strip". "OK," admits the magazine, "it's not quite Miami yet."

But, boy, are they trying. Looking down from the 11th floor of my air conditioned suite at the Fairmont, I watched a gang toil in 40C to lay a pipe under the Florida-style freeway. Rather than dig the road up, a tunnel was bored underneath and the gang was pulling the cables through.

Mentioning this to a friend working in Dubai, he pointed out the obvious: there are no overhead cables or wires on the streets. Everything obtrusive or ugly is buried. It is Sim City come alive, with new zones in Dubai built for the 21st century, such as Internet City (where all homes are wired for the web), Festival City and Marina City.

Down at the Jumeirah Beach Club, general manager Doris Greif reeled off her S-list to explain the explosion in Dubai's popularity. "Sun, safety, sailing, surfing and shopping," she quotes. She doesn't mention sex and I'm not sure it's an oversight. Dubai seems too sanitised for that.

Half the customers are British, mostly couples in their 40s, here to chill out. But one of the three pools is for children, with waterslides, climbing frame and The Stingrays, an activity club for kids aged four to ten. Like La Manga in Spain, the resort looks to provide sport in the sun, with six floodlit tennis courts and golf at Dubai Creek, a ten-minute drive away. A sauna, steam room and gym are all here.

Not that a sauna is used much in summer. Just sit outside when the air temperature in August hits 45C. It's so hot that the sea is warmer than body temperature, and every morning hotels have to pump cold water into swimming pools.

But that hasn't stopped the Brits - hotels are regularly more than 80 per cent full even in the highest temperatures. And four day breaks, unthinkable only five years ago, are now easily available for around £500 a time.

"Dubai is the new Barbados. A lot of Sandy Lane people are coming here," a hotelier tells me, referring to the showy hotel in Barbados. Well, there are similarities, with diving, sailing, boating, riding and golf as common currency. However, sandboarding and camel racing set Dubai apart. Nor can Barbados boast a snowdome.

A sense of surreality dogged me throughout my stay. It doesn't surprise me to learn that Dubai is the world's biggest consumer of caviar - but it does to discover that there is only one bar outside the hotels. Inevitably, it is an Irish bar. It was also extraordinary to learn that of a population of one million, only 12 per cent carry UAE passports. The rest are on working visas, with the vast majority from the Indian subcontinent.

Hotel staff are highly trained, qualified and have bags of personality. The Fairmont recently interviewed 10,000 people for 100 places. The fact that three of the five check-in staff at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel spoke Russian says as much for the staff as it does for the clientele, but it is not just the Russians who come to what is fast becoming the biggest multicultural playpen in the world.

The nationalities of the hotel chains also mirror the diverse appeal of Dubai. Shangri La, Swiss chain Movenpick, Taj of India, Kempinski of Germany and Dusit of Thailand have all moved in, each looking to attract its own nationals to Dubai.

With this rate of change, the death of Emirates' ruler will not slow progress. Indeed, the automatic succession of his younger brother brings to the fore the man who more than any reflects and enjoys Dubai's international status. The forecasts and predictions will come to pass.

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