The exhibition "Arab Travel Market" was held in Dubai from May 2 to 5. This time it turned out to be the most impressive in its history, gathering 1750 participants. On an area of 22,437 square meters. meters (which is 40% more than last year) more than 1,750 exhibitors from 59 countries presented their expositions.
The first two days the exhibition was open only to registered participants. On Thursday and Friday after 5:00 p.m. everyone could already visit it (the entrance ticket cost 25 dirhams). Part of the fees from ticket sales went to charity.
The sponsors of the press center, which this time was visited by a total of about 800 journalists, were the organizers of the Dubai Trade Festival and the Summer Surprises celebration. Among the official information partners of ATM-2006 were: Radio Dubai station, CNBC Arabia and TTG Middle East, which reported on the progress of the event every day.
The grand scale of this annual exhibition, the thirteenth in a row, does not allow the organizers, RTE, to stop there. Next year, they predict new heights.
“Since 1994, when the ATM exhibition was held for the first time, our performance has increased by 10% annually,” said Tom Netley, Managing Director of RTE, at a press briefing. “This indicates a growing interest in the development of tourism in the entire Gulf region. the market is witnessing an unprecedented rise and influx of tremendous funds, there are more and more tourist destinations covering the Middle East. "
Abu Dhabi Tourism Office booth with an area of 1034 sq. M. meter (72% more than last year) reached the most impressive size in the history of the exhibition. Greece's national tourism organization increased its booth size by 143%; almost doubled the stand of Argentina.
This year, among the exhibitors there were 50 new exhibitors, including travel agencies from Japan, Poland, Ireland and Ethiopia. The guests of the exposition got acquainted with new projects of leading world and local airlines and hotel chains, as well as with unique tourist programs. Many cooperation agreements have been signed. Representatives of both inbound and outbound tourism showed interest in the event. The number of pre-registered visitors to the exhibition has doubled, 83% of which have the status of manager or director of the company.
The organizers were not mistaken in the calculations that the key figures of last year will surprise visitors this time. More than 100 representatives of the MICE sector have notified the organizers of their participation in advance. Many of them flew to Dubai with Emirates airplanes and stayed at the Hyatt hotels - the official hotel chain of the exhibition.
“We are very proud,” said Hamed Obaidala, Emirates Senior Vice President for Commercial Operations, “that it was our company that was honored to be the official carrier of the event guests. Like our company, ATM has reached new records. Many participants this year, both new and well-known (with overgrown stands) represent countries already served by Emirates. This clearly indicates the importance of ATM as the main event of the region in the field of MICE and travel. The exhibition was completely successful. "
The educational program of the event included 11 thematic seminars. They were devoted to branding, using the Internet in relations with the target audience, on-line travel, balneological and resort tourism in Thailand, the growth of outbound tourism in the Persian Gulf, the features of executive suites, tourism in Japan, life and work in the Middle East .
100 billion dirhams per 10 km of desert
At Bawadi’s booth, residents and visitors saw smaller copies of the Petronas twin tower in Kuala Lumpur, the Taipei tower in Taiwan, other Asian and local skyscrapers (such as Burj Dubai and Emirates Towers), and even St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
All these buildings, or rather their copies, which have become some symbols of the various stages of world urban planning, will be collected in the hotel and entertainment complex Bawadi worth 100 billion dirhams (over $ 27 billion). The complex will be located in the district of Dubailand, and will include more than 30 hotels with 29 thousand rooms. The total built-up area is 10 kilometers. The Bawadi project has every chance of becoming a world entertainment center thanks to the huge number of attractions, shopping centers and the largest theater on the planet.
Future hotels will receive the names "Pirate Cave", "Wild-Wild West", "African World", "Desert Coast". It is planned to build the world's largest Asia-Asia hotel with 6,500 rooms in the center of the complex with the largest business center in Arabia.
The project is being implemented by Tatweer, part of Dubai Holding, which provides 40% of the invested capital. Arabian and foreign investors are involved to cover the rest of the costs. The first five hotels of the new complex will open in 2010. In 2014, construction will be completed. In 2016, the hotel district will receive 3.3 million tourists a year, which will be one fifth of their total number in the emirate. By that time, all the hotels designed in the complex for 29 thousand rooms will be operational, which is equal to all the current hotel areas of Dubai combined.
From the bay to the Red Sea
At another booth, Rezidor SAS Hospitality, whose turnover is growing at an astonishing rate, spoke about its plans to combine 14 new properties under the brands Park Inn, Radisson SAS, Missoni and Regent by 2008.
The company recently announced plans to manage its first hotel apartment project. The Radisson SAS Residence, Pier 24 is set to appear in Dubai Marina's prestigious new neighborhood. This object, overlooking the man-made harbor and located near the areas of Media City and Internet City, is due to open in early 2008. It will include 142 luxurious rooms, a restaurant and a health club, as well as a pool and three large shopping areas.
In Aqaba (Jordan), the company will also take part in the creation of an elite area on the Red Sea. Radisson SAS Tala Bay Resort is a mixed-type development project with several hotels, residential complexes, a harbor and leisure area, including a golf course, water park and 2 km long beach on the Red Sea.
It will include 323 rooms, a spacious foyer with a bar, another rooftop bar, as well as two restaurants, three swimming pools and a 342-meter beach, which is successfully integrated into the green landscape. The hotel, owned by a leading local investment company, is due to be completed in June 2007.
Another area of interest for the Rezidor SAS Group is Oman's growing market, which the company plans to launch its new Park Inn hotel brand. This complex in Muscat, the capital of the country, will include 200 hotel rooms, a restaurant, a bar, a health club and a business center. It will be in the city center and a short drive from the beach, the diplomatic quarter and shopping centers. Construction will be completed by 2008.
Currently Rezidor SAS operates more than 60 Park Inn hotels in Europe and Africa and is not going to stop there. Brand Park Inn should enter the market of Saudi Arabia, more precisely, Riyadh and Al Khobar. The Rezidor network now owns 273 hotels with 50,000 rooms in 49 countries. Her plans are to reach the figures of 700 managed hotels by 2015.
Australia was given to the monarchists
Special attention was paid to the stand of the REFAD hotel chain, which has five operating and six buildings under construction. Over the next 5 years, she plans to commission six new hotels each year.
At the booth, one could learn about the first Refad deluxe hotel in the center of Dubai, which will be managed by The Monarch, a subsidiary brand of the company. The facility will also include a business center and a grandiose office building on Sheikh Zayed Highway. The hotel, consisting of 240 rooms and suites, will find its place seven luxury restaurants and a banquet hall for 600 people.
In total, the construction will occupy 150 thousand square meters; parking will be designed for 700 cars. An office building with a height of 37 floors will offer 33 thousand square meters of office space. It is planned to be commissioned at the end of the current year.
Refad currently operates the Munich Monarch Center, which includes a hotel, spa and conference center worth € 7 million. In addition, she owns three properties under the Rester brand in Kuwait, as well as a four-star hotel with a beach club in Lebanon. The Monarch subsidiary will operate the Oqyana Hotel, which is scheduled to be erected on the Australia island of Dubai's The World archipelago. Construction work at this facility will begin in 2008. In the same year, a 20-story hotel with a conference center in Kuwait will open. Designed for 350 rooms, it will cost the company $ 100 million.
Decisive chord
Accor is set to become the largest hotel chain in the Middle East. Although this group is already one of the largest in the world, over the next three years it plans to increase the number of its hotels from 18 to 58. As a result, the total capacity of its facilities in the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Yemen will increase by 350%.
Speaking at a press conference, company management representatives spoke about plans for opening new hotels in Dubai: Sofitel Old Town, Sofitel Thalassa Palm Jumeirah, Mercure Grand, Jumeirah Lake, Novotel City of Arabia. In addition, they have plans to open two hotels in Mecca - the Mercure Grand Residence Aziziah and the grand Zam Zam with 1240 rooms and a cost of $ 650 million, which will open in September this year.
In total, Accor plans to open 16 new facilities in the region: eight in the UAE, two in Oman, and one each in Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In total, 168 people in 140 countries of the world work for this company. She is rightly considered the European leader and one of the largest travel, tourism and corporate services groups in the world. She owns about 4,000 hotels in more than 466,000 rooms in 92 countries, as well as casinos, travel agencies and restaurants. 21 million people in 35 countries of the world resort to its services.
The grand scope of the projects presented at the exhibition did not leave indifferent the representatives of the Department of Tourism and Commercial Marketing of Dubai (DTKM). Khalifa Ali Buamaim, manager of overseas advertising campaigns, emphasized his satisfaction with the event. According to him, the exposition successfully coincided with the heyday of the hotel industry in Dubai, which in 2005 reached record levels both in the number of guests (6.2 million per year) and in revenue (8.8 billion dirhams).
Even the DTKM Dubai booth this time has grown to 800 square meters. meters, becoming 29% more than last year. The latest statistics from the World Tourism Organization predicts that this year tourism and travel will reach $ 148 billion in the Middle East alone. In the UAE, this industry should grow by 4.4% per year in the next 10 years. Revenues from tourism already make up 10% of the budget of the United Arab Emirates.
There is a place for 2050The visitors of the ATM-2006 exhibition were shocked by the Airport City project
Visitors to the Arab Travel Market (ATM-2006) exhibition were not indifferent to the Airport City booth, now being designed in the Jebel Ali area, 40 kilometers from Dubai's business districts.
For the first time, the emirate’s public got acquainted with this project at the Dubai-2005 international aerospace show. This time, the World Trade Center, which hosted the ATM exhibition, allocated a thousand square meters of Al-Multak Hall to the Airport City exhibition. The demonstration equipment of the German company Mamemo Productions Group allowed visitors to fully experience the atmosphere of the project.
“This exposition can be safely called the most ambitious and impressive among all the projects presented at the ATM 2006,” acknowledged His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, President of the Emirates Group of Companies and Chairman of the Department of Civil Aviation of the Government of Dubai.
According to Sheikh Ahmed, since November last year, work on the final version of the General Plan of Airport City has made great progress. She was accompanied by an awareness campaign informing potential investors of all the benefits of this mega-project. The future construction of the giant airport will include many different developments in the field of aviation, logistics, commercial and residential construction, the leisure and entertainment industry.
“Our goal,” said Sheikh Ahmed, “is to reveal all aspects of this grandiose idea to a diverse audience, including the heads of airlines and representatives of the local, regional and international press. Of course, feedback from future project participants is very important for us, and we carefully listen to all the constructive suggestions. "
The development of an area of 140 square meters. km will allow you to create an international airport that has already received the JXB code. Its capacity will be comparable to London Heathrow Airport and Chicago's O'Hara combined. In the language of numbers, this is 120 million passengers a year, which should satisfy the needs of Dubai in freight and passenger transportation up to 2050.
