Jumeirah reframes luxury hospitality within contemporary Arab creativity

The luxury hotel chain unveiled a two-year brand repositioning, putting Arab culture at the centre of its new global identity. Jumeirah partnered with strategic agency Soursop to create the new global platform, which includes a short film and book anchored in contemporary art and poetry.

With the repositioning, Jumeirah moves away from luxury tropes and towards Arab hospitality as a cultural philosophy. The new platform, released during Ramadan, features a book, Where Worlds Meet, as well as the cinematic film Our Flame by Beyoncé director Emmanuel Adjei.

Where Worlds Meet draws on Majlis – the Arab tradition of convening poets, thinkers and guests in a place of hospitality – and translates it into a contemporary framework of artist collaboration at global scale. Inside the book, Emirati artist Lamya Gargash’s Majlis series (2008-2009) reframes domestic interiors as a cultural archive. 

The book reimagines Arabic typography and original calligraphy works, grounding the project in the living tradition of Arabic script. Photography throughout the book calls back to traditional values of Arab culture rooted in natural landscapes, historical images and culturally defining interiors, while presenting it in a contemporary way.

The short film Our Flame continues the book’s narrative of intellectual architecture. Directed by Emmanuel Adjei and written by Shamma Al Bastaki, it centres on a single flame carried across Dubai, London, Capri, Bali, Mallorca and the open sea as a symbol of the warmth moving between cultures.

At Capri Palace Jumeirah, the brand positions Arabian hospitality within a broader art historical context, with works by Giorgio de Chirico and Mario Schifano forming part of its permanent collection.

This project, which was completed with the help of production resource company Whale Amsterdam and production company 100%, aims to build a brand universe for Jumeirah that functions as a cultural platform. It marks Jumeirah’s first step into a future of artistic collaboration.