oldeberon,
Dubai airport is very constrained due to airspace. The regional ATC is bounded by Iran and Oman, and flights inbound from that direction only have a 6 minute timeframe to show up on the screens, so all of that traffic has a very short notification time to be integrated by ATC. The airspace issues with DWC, which shares a hold pattern further complicates the issues.
Depending, if something is in the way, they will remove it
In addition, there are very narrow corridors due to military airspace, tall structures, other Countries, and other restricted zones.