Hiring a keynote speaker in Dubai: what to ask first

Most people book a keynote speaker the way they order catering: check availability, confirm the fee, send the brief a week before. Then they wonder why the room stayed quiet. Here is what to ask instead, from someone who is on the other side of that email.

Ask what they will change in the room, not what they will talk about

A topic is not an outcome. “AI and the future of work” is a subject; “your managers leave able to name three tasks their team should stop doing by hand” is an outcome. Any speaker worth booking will push you toward the second sentence, because that is what makes the talk memorable and what makes your event worth attending.

Ask who is in the room, then check they asked you back

If a speaker accepts without asking about your audience, expect a recycled talk. I ask four things before I say yes: who is in the room, what they already know, what the one thing is they should leave with, and what happened at your last event that you do not want repeated. Those answers change the whole structure.

Settle the language before the date

In the Gulf this matters more than people admit. A keynote delivered in Arabic to an Arab audience lands differently from the same content in English, and a bilingual room needs a deliberate decision rather than an improvisation. I speak in Arabic, English or French, and I would rather agree that in the first email than discover it backstage.

Ask about filming and reuse before you agree the fee

If you intend to film the talk and use clips in your marketing afterwards, that is not part of a standard speaking fee anywhere in the world. Say it upfront. It is easy to price and impossible to fix afterwards.

The questions that reveal an unprepared speaker

• Can you send me the deck you used last time? — a good answer is “no, because yours will be different”.
• What do you need from us on the day? — vague answers mean vague preparation.
• Who else is on the agenda? — a speaker who does not care is not thinking about the arc of your event.
• What happens in the Q and A if nobody asks anything? — everyone who has stood on a stage has a plan for that.

And on fees

There is no standard rate, in Dubai or anywhere. A fee moves with the format, the preparation, the travel, and whether the talk is recorded and reused. What you should expect is a clear proposal rather than a number pulled out of the air. Send the date, the audience and the slot length and you will have one within 48 hours.

Topics, formats and past stages are on the speaking page, and there is a short list of questions organisers usually ask at the bottom of it. If you would rather just talk it through, write to me.