Welcome to the Shuttrd Newsroom — what we will publish, and how we will earn your trust

The Shuttrd Newsroom publishes two articles a week — every Tuesday and Thursday — across four categories: Guides, Product Updates, Industry and Company News. This post is the first in the Company News category, and it exists to answer a fair question before you invest any reading time here: what is this publication for, and why should you trust what it says?

What is the Shuttrd Newsroom for?

Shuttrd is a UAE marketplace for booking homes and creative spaces by the hour — for photoshoots, video production, music recording, events, workshops, meetups and content creation. The Newsroom is the editorial side of that marketplace. Its job is to answer, accurately and in plain language, the questions people actually ask before they book or list a space in the Emirates. How much does a photo studio cost per hour in Dubai? Do you need a permit to film in a rented apartment? What does a restaurant's minimum spend really commit you to? What could your showroom's empty hours be worth?

Those questions have answers, but they are scattered across rate cards, resolutions, directories and forum threads — and a surprising amount of what circulates is wrong. The Newsroom's promise is to do the collecting and checking, show its sources, and say clearly when something cannot be verified.

What will you actually get?

Five things, on a repeating rhythm.

Price and cost guides. What spaces really cost to rent by the hour in the UAE — studios, apartments, restaurants, offices, event spaces — built from published rate cards and named directories, with the date each figure was read. Our photo studio price guide is the template: every number in it is a public rate attributed to its source.

Rules and permits, from the text. Guides that quote the actual law rather than the common claim. The first, on Dubai's filming permit rules, corrects a myth most guides repeat — that shoots on private property need no permit — by going back to what Executive Council Resolution No. 50 of 2014 actually says.

Location and venue guides. Where to shoot, record, host and gather, organised by district, space type and use case — covering all eight space categories on Shuttrd, from cafés and restaurants to media studios, showrooms, offices, retail spaces, apartments, event spaces and private jets.

Guides for hosts. The supply side gets equal weight: how to price a space per hour, what makes a listing get booked, how deposits and damage protection work, and what off-hours could earn for a restaurant, showroom or office that sits empty part of the week.

Product and company updates. Product Updates run only in months when something actually shipped — no changelog padding. Company News, like this post, covers the platform itself.

There is a sixth thing coming, with an honest caveat attached: original data. Quarterly price-index reports built from live listing data are planned, but they will only appear once the marketplace's inventory is large enough to be representative. Until then, no article here will quote a "Shuttrd average price" or a platform booking statistic — you will get publicly sourced UAE market figures instead, clearly labelled as market rates.

Who writes it, and how is it checked?

Articles are written and edited by the Shuttrd editorial team and published under the Shuttrd Editorial byline, with named contributors added as the roster grows. Every piece goes through the same checklist before it is published.

The rules are short but strict. Every factual claim must be traceable to an official source or a clearly named publication, cited in the text with a date. Regulatory guidance quotes the governing text and names the authority — and still tells you to confirm current fees directly, because schedules change. Figures that cannot be verified are either omitted or labelled as unverified. No invented statistics, no invented case studies, no quotes from people who do not exist. Where a market figure comes from a third-party directory or guide, we name it, so you can weigh the source yourself.

That standard costs us some easy content. It also means that when an article here states a number, you can trace where it came from — which is the entire point.

When and how to follow along

New articles land on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Guides dominate the schedule; each month also carries at least one industry piece and one host-focused guide, and seasonal planning content runs six to eight weeks ahead of the moment it serves — Design Week venues before Design Week, Ramadan campaign planning before production windows close.

The simplest way to keep up is the monthly dispatch — the signup sits on the Newsroom page — which collects the best of each month in one email. If you would rather browse than subscribe, the four category filters on the Newsroom index sort everything we publish.

And if you came here to find a space rather than to read about one, skip straight to the marketplace: Browse Spaces lists what is available by the hour, with pricing and inclusions stated up front.

One request

A publication that promises accuracy should be easy to correct. If you spot a rate that has moved, a rule that has changed, or a claim that does not hold up, tell us — the contact details are on the site, and corrections are made in place with the update date shown. The Newsroom will be judged on whether creatives, event planners and hosts in the UAE can rely on it. Hold it to that.