“…So, as no single set of factors exists that can determine destination competitiveness and can be applied to all the destinations (Abreu Novais, Ruhanen, and Arcodia 2018), and given that the major factors contributing to competitiveness differ for various types of economies and their levels of development (Porter, Sachs, and McArthur 2001), the need to explore these factors is imperative, more so in new and emerging tourist destinations (Reisinger, Michael, and Hayes 2019). Liao, Lin, and Hsieh (2019) suggest that future research could reveal more relevant factors that exert an influence on indigenous tourism satisfaction, so as to enrich the studies on indigenous tourism development from the perspective of residents. Responding to calls for further research into the perspective of residents on the influence of tourism in different countries (Pham and Vogt 2019), as well as recommendations for future research to account for further classifications of residents, such as ethnicity (Asian and Western, Arabs and non-Arabs, or Muslim and non-Muslim), the authors chose the UAE (Kayal and Maheswaran 2018), an emerging country (Kayal and Maheswaran 2018) with unique traits outlined below, and more specifically two cities that are recognized as tourist destinations: Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the UAE, and Dubai, one of the world’s most prestigious and popular tourist attractions.…”