Photo courtesy of Majorie van Leijen and was posted on Emirates 24/7

There was a recent article on the renaming of the Jebel Ali station on the red line to UAE Exchange. A fair few dirhams might have been exchanged to make this possible and, living in a commercial city, it’s understandable and (to some extent) appreciated.  It’s to some extent even acceptable. What I don’t understand is  how all the stakeholders (RTA as well as the brands) don’t understand the repercussions of renaming the station because the Metro is a public transport system and confusing travellers (both residents and visitors) is not in the best public interests. It doesn’t do either of the brands any goodwill.

If I were Dubai’s RTA, I would stay with the ethics of its own brand – which is providing the most convenient and user-friendly public transport system that is both resident and visitor friendly. Changing names of stations to brand names that doesn’t tell the visitor where they are and in context with where they have to go, is not in line with these ethics. I think involving the private sector to contribute to the public sector is a wonderful move and, quite reasonably, the brands expect a return. Why not keep the name of the location and add the brand name too. So Karama station could be Karama/ADCB or vice versa. There could be stronger visual branding around the station which would be quite acceptable.

The brands too, arguably, would get much better return and a lot more goodwill  from the public. Visually, I think the advertisers in each of the stations are getting much better value than those that get the station renamed after their own.

Time for all the brands to go back to the drawing board and rethink the value of their brand versus the public service.