Based on friends and colleagues in the middle east, It is definitely known as a tough Geography to work in, in terms of hours. This is due to a couple reasons:

• A lot of growth/strategy cases that are very demanding by nature due to ambiguity and often starting from nothing
• Typically less good client counterparts (especially at junior levels)- which means worse data to clean/work with, less effective/efficient meetings, etc.
• Extremely high growth has meant that some people hired into consulting/manager roles haven't necessarily been vetted for quality and culture of firms - which can lead to unsustainable projects
• Also due to high growth and relatively nascent stage of offices: cases more likely to be mis-scoped or under-resourced (i.e. too small a team for too big a task). Sometimes a project that should require 5 people simply can't be fully staffed because there are only 4 people available in the office.

That said - Dubai is not necessarily any worse than some of the tougher countries in Europe - e.g. Italy, Spain, Germany - and almost definitely not as bad as East Asian countries - i.e. Japan and Korea.