Dubai: Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) held its first bi-annual ‘City Briefing’ for 2021 at the newly built Dubai Exhibition Centre, highlighting the sector’s promising performance since the reopening of the city to international tourists a year ago.
As efforts intensified across the tourism ecosystem to accelerate momentum in this landmark year for Dubai and the UAE, the forum featured a detailed presentation on Expo 2020, the multi-faceted mega event which runs from 1 October, 2021 to 31 March 2022.
Presided by Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General, Dubai Tourism, the forum hosted over 1,000 key executives from leading establishments in the hospitality, travel, and tourism sectors. It was held within the framework of Dubai Tourism’s regular dialogue with key industry leaders to exchange insights and work with them to ensure the industry is seamlessly aligned with tourism growth initiatives and strategies.
By holding the forum at the Dubai Exhibition Centre with precautionary guidelines being comprehensively observed, Dubai Tourism sought to highlight the enormous significance of Expo 2020 to Dubai’s tourism industry and the gathering pace of recovery in the events sector.
“The emirate’s tourism rebound in the second half of 2020, leading to industry stabilisation in 2021, is also a reflection of the crucial support extended by our stakeholders and partners. Our constant dialogue has allowed us to collectively adapt to the evolving situation and implement our post-pandemic strategy as we continuously strive to improve traveller confidence and build an even more resilient and sustainable tourism sector,” said Almarri, Director.
Partners were briefed on the positive developments since the city reopened to tourists on 7 July 2020. Dubai Tourism data shared with participants shows the success of the city’s reopening strategy. Incremental increase in tourist arrivals month on month from markets that are open delivered 3.7 million international overnight visitors in the July 2020 - May 2021 period. Dubai Tourism’s partners and stakeholders expressed their appreciation for the multi-pronged strategy to combat the pandemic, leading to the reopening of the city to global travellers in July 2020.
“It has been a year since Dubai opened its doors for leisure and business visitors, and we have demonstrated that international air travel and tourism can safely take place with enhanced health protocols. Emirates is proud to have played its part to help reopen air travel, closely working with DTCM on health and safety measures to safeguard the wellbeing of visitors,” said Adnan Kazim, Emirates’ Chief Commercial Officer.
Dubai Airports has taken significant steps to minimise the impact of new travel requirements on customer journeys through the airport. The operator along with the Dubai Health Authority and Pure Health recently opened a 20,000 square-feet in-house lab that can process up to 100,000 PCR samples collected from passengers at DXB daily, providing reports within a few hours.
“Despite the challenges during a period that was the most turbulent time in the history of international air travel, Dubai Airports retained its position as the world’s busiest international airport for the seventh consecutive year with 25.9 million passengers in 2020. After having welcomed nearly six million passengers in Q1 2021, DXB now looks set for a stable second quarter,” said Paul Griffiths, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Airports.
