Cave tunnels to clamber through? Check. Rocky pinnacles to scale? Check. Boulders and dinosaur bones to climb up? Check. No, this isn’t the checklist of requirements on a wild adventure holiday in the mountains, but the range of activities on offer at the latest Adventure HQ, which has just opened in Abu Dhabi’s Yas Mall.
Since the company was founded in Dubai six years ago, it has been filling the country’s malls with the kind of adventure sports that used to be limited to parks and mountain peaks. As well as offering new ways to scale dizzy heights, Adventure HQ’s six other branches in Abu Dhabi and Dubai also offer skate parks, a bike pump track and a trampoline park.
The latest Adventure HQ is spread over two floors covering 20,000 square feet, which includes an 8,000-square-foot store where you can find more than 7,000 products for outdoor pursuits.
The standout activity in its new Adventure Zone is the network of weaving, cave-like tunnels to crawl through while wearing authentic mining helmets. Indoor caving is unique in the Middle East and the company claims this is only the second of its kind in the world.
“The only other place you can try indoor caving is in Ireland,” says Adventure HQ’s founding chief executive Sam Whittam. “The new Yas Mall caving experience is as lifelike as it can get, and there are lots of different routes you can do.”
Whittam says the cave tunnels offer the thrills, without the dangers, of being inside an actual cave tunnel. “The company that manufactures the cave tunnels and the climbing pinnacle use a glass-reinforced plastic, which they mould off actual rock climbing faces on limestone cliffs in Bulgaria,” he says.
Another new feature is that Adventure HQ is also inviting schools to bring children to use their adventure sports facilities during lesson times, as well as after school. The company, which is the region’s largest outdoor adventure and active-lifestyle retail specialist, has spent the past year developing an initiative to encourage schools to use their facilities for physics, chemistry and maths classes, as well as for PE lessons.
“We’ve got a couple of in-house school leaders from the UK, who have developed a programme in conjunction with some teachers,” says Whittam. “We put 104 different lesson plans together that all link back to learning objectives around whatever the schools are trying to get the kids to understand in their curriculums. This is a really great [programme] we can run for the schools, to get kids more active.”
Whittam practises what he preaches to the children who come to use Adventure HQ’s facilities – not only by trying out the new tunnelling experience for himself, which he says was “fun”, but also by living his own life outside work as an adventure.
“This weekend I’m doing the Ironman 70.3 challenge at Jumeirah Beach Park. I absolutely lead by example at Adventure HQ. You have to.”
Adventure HQ is already on the hunt for the next big idea.
“We are trawling the globe to come up with what’s next,” says Whittam. “We’ve been looking at an indoor mountain-bike park, a flying-fox kind of glider, all sorts of wild and wacky things. The world’s a crazy place when it comes to entertainment centres. But we want to do things that are different. We want to keep evolving and not stay static – we want to always keep giving people new and fresh options.”
• Minimum time for each activity at Adventure HQ in Yas Mall is 30 minutes (Dh60). Only for ages 4 and above
artslife@thenational.ae
Tax authority targets shisha levy evasion
The Federal Tax Authority will track shisha imports with electronic markers to protect customers and ensure levies have been paid.
Khalid Ali Al Bustani, director of the tax authority, on Sunday said the move is to "prevent tax evasion and support the authority’s tax collection efforts".
The scheme’s first phase, which came into effect on 1st January, 2019, covers all types of imported and domestically produced and distributed cigarettes. As of May 1, importing any type of cigarettes without the digital marks will be prohibited.
He said the latest phase will see imported and locally produced shisha tobacco tracked by the final quarter of this year.
"The FTA also maintains ongoing communication with concerned companies, to help them adapt their systems to meet our requirements and coordinate between all parties involved," he said.
As with cigarettes, shisha was hit with a 100 per cent tax in October 2017, though manufacturers and cafes absorbed some of the costs to prevent prices doubling.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
