Arabian Travel Market 2020 is to adopt Events for Tourism Growth as its official show theme.
The event will take place between 19th and 22nd April at Dubai World Trade Centre.
World Travel and Tourism Centre data suggests that travel and tourism in the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates, is directly contributing to the region’s GDP.
The GDP is expected to increase by as much as 4.2% per year to $133.6bn in nine years by 2028.
This is partly driven by the extra tourists coming to the region because of mega-events, cultural festivals, MICE events, concerts, and major political and sporting events.
Arabian Travel Market’s exhibition director for the Middle East Danielle Curtis says that events of many different types have become increasingly crucial drivers in recent years for the arrival of international tourists in the GCC and UAE markets as well as the wider MENA region.
Curtis says that the spotlight theme of Arabian Travel Market 2020 is to be launched as a platform in order to explore the effect on the growth of tourism in the region by such events.
The goal is also to inspire the region’s hospitality and tourism industry to create the next generation of these events and to bring together senior executives in the industry.
The event gives such executives the chance to meet and do business over the course of four days while they are all under one roof.
In regard to the UAE, there was a 14% growth in football in the major exhibition centres of Abu Dhabi and Dubai between 2017 and 2018.
Dubai World Trade Centre welcomed as many as 3.4 million tourists in 2018.
Two million were also being welcomed during the same time period by Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre in combination with Al Ain Exhibition Centre.
Expo 2020 is to be the biggest event ever organised in the Arab world.
The event will run for six months from October 2020 to April 2021, and will showcase 192 pavilions from nations all over the world.
There are expected to be more than 25 million visitors in total coming to the event, around 145,000 visits for each of the 173 days that it will run.
Eleven million visits from UAE residents are expected along with 14 million visitors from overseas, the great majority of whom will most likely be tourists.
The local economy will experience a boost of as much as $33.4bn due to the event, consultancy firm EY claims.
This will be the equivalent of supporting 49,700 full-time jobs for an entire year.
Anyone who is planning to come to the UAE in order to attend Expo 2020 or any other such event will need to take out travel insurance before they do so.
Travel insurance represents a vital financial safeguard against the potential cost of some of the pitfalls associated with travel, including illness and the theft of personal items while in a foreign country.
