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I am close to Receiving an offer from a company called ITP a publishing house. I will be living and working in Dubai for the company ITP, and wondered if any of you good people had heard of them as they are a large media publisher?? If yes please do tell me what you know and your thoughts!!

yep, they are pretty stable for a media company. if memory serves me they have been running for about 6 years... which is quite a good track record for media companies in the area. there are plenty of media companies and local publications, as most of them don't last longer than a year. although i think you'd be surprised if you look at the publication and circulation numbers - they are very small. ask itp for a list of its publications (think Emirates Home is one), good magasine - circulation of about 25 - 30k copies (if memory serves me correctly).

they are also into organising a few media events and some trade shows.
just bear in mind that they are located in one of the freezones, so their terms of employment/ contracts etc.. are slightly different to those of dubai.

mmm .... update, just had a look at a list of thier publications ... quiet a lot to say the least, some i hadn't realised were theirs and others i've never heard of before!

http://www.itp.com/magazines/

dbxsoul thank you,

You know your stuff.

They have 55 publications in total and you are correct they do put on a number of events/shows. I know a fair bit about them already as I have had 3 telephone and 1 face to face interview so far, but have not actually spoke to anyone who knows them and that are based in Dubai, so this has been a big help.
Can you tell e what you mean by the free zone? And how it may effect my terms of employment and contract??

Just out of interest, the two office locations below that I will be working from are they not ideal locations for working in Dubai??

1) Near Le Meridien Fairway
Garhoud Road
Dubai

2)Dubai Media City
Dubai

I thank you for your time on this.

hi there glad to help,
i used to write for some of their publications, but have not done so in a while due to time constraints. i used to deal mostly with E/home, but also on occasion with the events side of things. they have two addresses if memory serves me correctly, the one in media city is the free zone portion of it, but the printing is done in "dubai" out of the free zone as they don't have a print shop in the FZ, also anything produced in the FZ would be subject to a 5% tax on entry into dubai. the fz portion is their admin, staff writers and lay up sections.... again i may be a bit rusty on this and it may have changed.

the free zone systems (there are a number of them around dubai) are basically that, a company can establish its self in the zone without the need of a local (uae national) sponsor, which is a requirement for other companies operating in dubai. all imports into dubai are subject to a 5% import tax, with the exception of goods coming into a FZ, only once they pass out of the gates and into dubai are they taxed. many companies set up in the free zones so that they can double invoice for taxation purposes.

the main difference (for an employee) working in a FZ is that they are not subject tot he same labour constraints as those working in dubai, in other words they can pretty much hand in their notice and go to work for another company in the FZ without any kind of labour ban being imposed on them (in dubai there is a mandatory 6 month ban, subject to a few conditions). if possible try and get a contract that is written with you as an employee of the FZ, this will give you a little more latitude if you decided to move.

If there is anything else I can help you with let me know

ITP and Motivate Publishing are the two biggest publishing hourses in the UAE pretty much.

I know a few people that work for ITP and from what I can gather they are pretty good to work for.

The only thing about them that irritates me is they can be quite biased in some respects, when they talk about other media in some of their publications like Time Out and Campaign magazine. Purely because they are government owned and will side with the other media in their stable, whilst being quite happy to take a swipe at others for no apparent reason.

I find this attitude a little unprofessional, and have told them so on several occassions.

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Chocoholic wrote:Purely because they are government owned and will side with the other media in their stable, whilst being quite happy to take a swipe at others for no apparent reason.

I find this attitude a little unprofessional, and have told them so on several occassions.

ITP is goverment owned ?

Sorry, I did not.

Stevo wrote:I am close to Receiving an offer from a company called ITP a publishing house. I will be living and working in Dubai for the company ITP, and wondered if any of you good people had heard of them as they are a large media publisher?? If yes please do tell me what you know and your thoughts!!