Just to let you know:
If you travel business class with Emirates starting in Europe, you pay the same price for roundtrip EU to DXB as for e.g. EU-DXB-PVG-HKG-DXB-EU. The beauty is you can book it as multiple destination trip with quite a long stop over period in betweeni.
I did this back in November 2006, so play around on Emirates website to check if it is still working.
Airline pricing is quite funny anyhow:
E.g. Lufthansa prices its tickets according to the language settings on their website (not by country of residene). E.g. AGP-FRA-AGP for 479 EUR in English settings, 199 EUR in Spanish settings (same seats, same plane)
The most astonishing experience I made with BA though (Club Europe Class):
London - Cayman Islands - London around 3200 GBP (roughly 4800 EUR)
DUS - London - Cayman Islands - London - DUS 1150 EUR
Ticket London-DUS-London roughly 400 EUR
So if you were a cheap bastard living in London, you would be better off by more than 3000 EUR simply by flying to DUS, then back to London, then entering the same flight and having the same seats as intended in the first place....
So its always worthwile playing around with airline website settings and starting destinations....