DUBAI: AIMING HIGH
WHEN DUBAI TOURISM INVITED MORE THAN 80 INTERNATIONAL EVENTS PLANNERS AND JOURNALISTS from Europe for an educational visit, a recurring theme was the profusion of superlatives scat- tered like gilt confetti throughout the four days. Longest, biggest, fastest, tallest, busiest... All of these words come into play when describing both the scale of ambition and the ongoing development in Dubai. As our tour guide puts it when he points out the gleaming Dubai metro, gliding along its viaduct above us on the Sheikh Zayed road: “In 50 years, we have gone from Bedouins on camels to the longest driverless trains in the world.” Steen Jakobsen is director of Dubai Business Events, the meetings,
incentives, conferences and exhibi- tions (MICE) division of Dubai Tourism. He lays out the organisation’s vision for 2020, which includes attracting 20 million annual international visitors and positioning Dubai as the “world’s leading business event destination”. These objectives, he says, are integrally linked to the development strategies of both the Emirate itself and the wider UAE.
A multifaceted approach sees Dubai
Tourism’s priorities include increasing market share of existing international events, while developing new home- grown business events that support key local sectors. This also ties in with UAE strategy to establish itself as a knowledge economy, innovating in fields such as
VENUES AND CORPORATE ACTIVITIES
DUBAI PARKS AND RESORTS This is yet another mammoth Dubai project: more than 230 hectares, with over 100 rides, shows and attractions across three theme parks: Motiongate, based around blockbuster Hollywood family movies; Legoland Dubai,
complete with 60 million Lego bricks; and Bollywood Parks with an 850-seat theatre equipped for full-scale musicals. There is also a kilometre of riverfront and a 500-room Polynesian-themed hotel, run by Marriott. The park is set to open in October, and has a wide range of MICE options, including partial and exclusive usage.
dubaiparksandresorts.com
112 BBT MAY/JUNE 2016
PLATINUM HERITAGE
Luxury tours and safaris include wildlife drives in beautifully restored open-top 1950s Land Rovers, within the restricted Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve. There is no environmentally damaging ‘dune bashing’ allowed here, but instead the chance to have close encounters with wild oryx. Our drive was followed by falconry demonstrations, camel rides and dinner under the stars in a solar-powered Bedouin desert camp – complete with barbecue and traditional dishes washed down with camel milk, dancing and shisha pipes. The company offers a range of private corporate and bespoke itineraries for planners.
platinum-heritage.com
The scale of ambition for Dubai’s MICE strategy matches that of the Emirate itself
education, space travel, robotics, stem-cell research and renewable energy. It’s worth noting that such optimism appears to remain undimmed despite recent challenges. In the aftermath of the 2008 credit crunch, residential property prices dropped dramatically, and more re- cently were down around 13 per cent year- on-year in 2015. Grandiose schemes, such as The World man-made islands complex, have stalled, as have many less headline- grabbing construction projects. And yet, on the vast palm tree-shaped artificial archipelago known as Palm Jumeirah, 16 of the planned 30 luxury hotels are already open, with more construction continuing apace. When we ride the world’s fastest elevators to the 148th floor of the world’s tallest tower, the 828-metre Burj Khalifa, the
Above left: Platinum Heritage. Above right: Dubai Parks and Resorts
TURNAROUND Dubai-based corporate team-building specialist Turnaround offers creative, strategic and educational challenges in its range of activities.
On this trip, our group of more than 80 delegates was
divided into small teams, each supplied with a GPS and 3G-enabled tablet. Throughout the four-day event, the teams competed to complete a range of tasks on the tablets, from answering quiz questions – either location-specific or based
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