Pictures: At ATM 2022, UAE’s travel and tourism industry is mapping out the next growth strategy

Arabian Travel Market 2022 has a clear mandate to go by – spot the trends that would sustain Dubai and the UAE’s travel and tourism ambitions through the rest of the decade.

The country’s airlines are bringing back all the flights they had up in the air in 2019. New airlines have come into being since then, adding their own routes and frequencies to keep the UAE in the spotlight as the place to live, do business, be holidaying or shopping.

Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President, Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Airline take a tour after opening the Arabian Travel Market.

What next? Is the UAE ready for the next lot of hotels, whatever be the star rating? Or should developers and hotel operators wait a while, get a feel of what demand would be in the near-term, and then decide? Or should they try and pre-empt what likely demand could be and instead build new?

At ATM 2022, hotel operators were understandably cautious. The focus for now will be on completing the hotel and resort projects that have passed key construction milestones.

Multiple projects are due for completion between now and mid-2023, including super high-profile ones such as a One&Only at One Za’abeel in Dubai.

Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaimah will have more coming, with Al Marjan Island in the latter now a prime spot for additional resort projects. Abu Dhabi will, meanwhile, keep working on those two islands, Yas and Saadiyat.

Visitors at the Emirates Airlines stall.

Create destinations and then amp up the experiences, that’s the plan. Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri, Managing Director and Group CEO of Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company, says it succinctly: “Tourism 365 launched at the start of the second-half of 2021 as part of ADNEC’s strategy to develop Abu Dhabi’s leisure tourism sector. We are proud to be a leading group that contributes to the sustainable growth of Abu Dhabi’s tourism industry. Our aim is to bring business and leisure travellers together to create a valuable social and economic impact on Abu Dhabi.”

Each emirate is going its own way with what they want to get out of the hospitality and tourism sector.

Ras Al Khaimah centres its strategy around ‘Balance Tourism’. “The need for good stewardship of our cultural heritage, environment, people and infrastructure has never been stronger, especially in post pandemic times,” said Raki Phillips, CEO at Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority. “Simply put, it’s time to move beyond just using less plastic to adopting an all-inclusive approach – from ensuring new projects such as hotels are developed at an organic pace to building new attractions with sustainability at their core.”

As Phillips says it, start thinking about the ‘New Age of Hospitality’ after the pandemic. The same rules, the same concepts, the same marketing ways will no longer apply.

Visitors meet and network at the Arabia Travel Market 2022.

Arabian culture on display at the Abu Dhabi stall during the Arabia Travel Market 2022.

Qatar stall at the Arabia Travel Market 2022.