Bringing back business
It was four days of pure networking between travel, tourism and hospitality industry partners at the first onsite trade show – Arabian Travel Market. Exhibitors from 62 destinations participated at this year’s edition along with buyers from 39 destinations, taking the total to 11,000 visitors. Industry leaders share their experience.
Since the beginning, Dubai has shown remarkable resilience in dealing with the pandemic. Using all the data available to us as a smart city to make decisions, and opening the economy sector by sector, with the right precautions being taken at each stage, has enabled the gradual recovery of the travel and tourism industry and allowed the city to open its borders.
We cannot wait and are ever ready to welcome travellers from the Middle East to the shores of Malaysia once the border opens. To revive and rejuvenate our tourism industry, our National Tourism Policy highlights transformational strategies namely – strengthen governance, create special tourism investment zones, embrace smart tourism, enhance demand sophistication.
We’ve been working on this event for the last 18 months and ATM is the first global exhibition in over 18 months. It’s been an exciting time opening but it has been a challenge. However, the good news is that we have attendance from 101 destinations and represented on the show-floor we have 62 destinations with regards to our exhibitors.
Arabian travel market is very important for the German hospitality industry, we are very hopeful to receive again, the Emirati and other residents from the UAE to our country. In 2019, we had 1.6 million nights by UAE citizens and residents in Germany. So it’s a very important market for us also it’s vice versa because 567,000 German tourists came to Dubai in 2019.
I’m delighted to see this overwhelming ambience and atmosphere, so ATM 2021 is a very successful event. If you see the GCC side of the hall, every GCC country is there and every pavilion is busy with more serious buyers and exhibitors. There are proper introductions and total networking happening, that’s what ATM is doing.
It’s actually quite refreshing to be at ATM physical as I flew in from New York just to be here for this event. The way it has been managed with social distancing and the way that they tell you to walk, all that has been great. I felt completely comfortable and it has just been great to reconnect with colleagues and friends that I had not been able to see in quite some time.
I think this is a good opportunity for Indonesia and the UAE. We have signed the travel corner arrangement, this type of arrangement enables us to move forward to welcoming back tourists. Now Bali will be the first destination and we are planning to open it. In Bali not only the tourism workers but also the people in the surrounding area will get vaccinated.
We are really very happy to be here as last year the event didn’t take place due to the pandemic. Things are now getting better and Arabian Travel Market is very important to us as it provides an opportunity to meet with our travel partners whom we could not meet for a long period of time.
ATM has always been a special event for the travel trade, and it was very promising to attend a physical event and meet clients and partners after a year. Though the numbers were less for obvious reasons, I felt that there were more productive meetings. Spain did not have a stand this year but we saw that most agents were keen on learning more about when things would be fine.
We are all very excited and happy as it not only brings us the confidence, it makes us feel that it is a new beginning, we are coming back and I believe that we should all congratulate the UAE, especially Dubai for bringing back ATM, which brings back the connections between the travel trade, the connections between the travel agencies, DMCs, airlines and so on.
I must say it has been an absolutely refreshing change that we had this event and I think that it is very important to set the trend, there are a lot of policies in place in terms of social distancing, wearing masks and you have to get vaccinated. We want to go and meet people and this is a very important platform for people like us to connect with our customers.
Thailand has been a frequent exhibitor at the ATM for the past two decades and I’m happy that ATM was a physical event. We in Thailand are so lucky to be the most popular destination for tourists from the ME and thanks to the ATM for providing us a great opportunity to meet our old friends in the tourism industry and make new friends from the industry.