I’m a bit slow on the uptake. Or maybe I haven’t been down to the water enough.

After 4.5 years, I have decided what Abu Dhabi … well, actually, the whole of the UAE … should focus on as its business model, After The Oil.

The beach.

It won’t bring in megabucks, like oil has … but the country and the capital probably could get along quite nicely leveraging those hundreds of miles of white beaches and warm Gulf waters into lots and lots of hotel nights from nearly frozen Europeans only seven hours (or less) away by air.

This occurred to me today at the Monte Carlo Beach Club on Saadiyat Island here in Abu Dhabi.

Ridiculously nice club. Not a hotel. A club. And way too expensive to join; 35,000 dirhams (more than $9,500) for a couple, and Dh25,000 ($6,800) for one person.

But, we could afford day passes, which gave us the run of the place, including, crucially, the 70 yards of fine-white-sand beach which ran down to the gentle mini-surf of the opalescent Gulf.

That we were able to order drinks, and get lunch for free, and take advantage of the gym and spa … was gilding the lily of “warm sand for cold tourists” magnificence of this resort — and, potentially, huge stretches of the UAE.

The beach is not totally overlooked in Abu Dhabi. The stretch along the Corniche is a few miles long, and includes shops and restaurants. But it is a bit difficult to reach the water, and parking is an issue, and the hubbub of the city is never out of earshot.

The city’s main island alone has other beach opportunities, particularly on its long western flank, which is nearly unused, at present. As well as on Saadiyat Island, only now being carefully developed as a haven for near-frozen Europeans for five or six months a year.

Already, a Park Hyatt and a St. Regis hotel have opened on the no-industry, low-noise island. Two more upper-end hotels are planned, and if they are anything like the first two, they will attract high-end clientele spending lots of money.

And that could be just the start. From Abu Dhabi to the southern edge of Dubai is about 75 miles of mostly unused coast. Hundreds more miles of beach-on-water situations exist from Abu Dhabi west to the border with Saudi Arabia, as well as north to the end of the peninsula.

The UAE could be the Middle East’s Costa del Sol, its Costa Bravo, its Biarritz and Riviera.

Not the year round, of course. It would be a no-go zone, pretty much, during the height of summer.

But when it’s nice here — December, January, February, March — it can be anywhere from “depressingly gray” to “frozen solid” in Europe, where millions of people believe deeply in vacations, need sun in a big way and have money to spend to make it happen — and the UAE is the nearest and most hospitable place to make it happen.

Malls? Who needs malls! Residential towers, race tracks? Just part of the bigger picture of miles and miles of manicured beaches with amenities.

This all became clear to me while reading a book on a chaise longue a few yards from the Gulf, sitting mostly in the shade of a big umbrella.

Why can’t this be on a larger scale? With options appealing to all sorts of demographics along this long stretch of sand-on-water?

Much more can be done here. And sun-starved tourists are out there to be had.

More beachfront property. Fewer oil wells. The UAE has a long-term future, after all.