Tag Archives: Dubai Tourism

As people come together to celebrate the joyous Eid Al Adha holiday, Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishments (DFRE) an agency of Dubai Tourism, has released the line-up of exciting events and activities taking place across the city for residents and tourists to enjoy. As there are many GCC visitors during this period many interesting programmes are lined up. It will consist of two concerts taking place across the city by two renowned Arab music icons. On September 2, Emirati singer Shamma Hamdan will perform at Dragon Mart 2 at 6.30pm whilst later in the week Mohammed Abdo will take to the stage at Dubai World Trade Centre on 6 September at 9pm to delight fans with a raft of hit songs. The highly anticipated fireworks will take place on the first day of Eid at Dubai Festival City at 9pm and 11pm. Firework displays will also take place at The Beach opposite JBR daily from August 31 to September 3 at 8.45pm. The venue will also host various performances on a daily basis to keep families entertained throughout the Eid holiday. La Perle as it opens its doors this Eid from 31st August. Sports-lovers can head to Dubai World Trade Centre which is hosting the 7th edition of Dubai Sports World featuring sports, tournaments, academies and activities designed for both serious athletes and sporting novices of all ages.

More than 100 human resources experts from Dubai’s hospitality sector attended the 2nd Dubai College of Tourism HR Forum organised recently by the Dubai College of Tourism (DCT). The Forum was designed to provide recruitment and training specialists in hotels the opportunity to get a better understanding of UAE’s labour laws and find solutions to various work-related challenges. DCT, an institution established by Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism),  plays a key role in human resources development in the emirate’s tourism industry and serves as a crucial link between Dubai Tourism and the trade to further enhance the quality of tourism services and the overall visitor experience. During the event held at The Address – Boulevard Hotel, speakers from government and private sector entities addressed the gathering of human resources professionals, covering topics such as Emiratisation, labour laws, and recruitment of staff. The participants were able to glean useful information and get advice from experts during the Q & A session that followed each presentation. Olivier R. Harnisch, CEO of Emaar Hospitality praised the work done by DCT and highlighted the fact that its Emiratisation objectives align with that of Emaar Hospitality. Major Majid AlZarouni, Head of Licensing Department, Security Industry Regulatory Agency (SIRA), a unit of Dubai Police that is responsible for the training of security guards, spoke on issues related to the hiring of security guards including their visas and salaries.

This year, Dubai Tourism has provided alternate higher education options for high school leavers, who dont wish to take the traditional academic route to university. The newly inaugurated Dubai College of Tourism, a government-backed institution that will specialise in vocational training for the Emirate’s thriving tourism and hospitality sectors, is now accepting applications for its September 2017 ‘Introduction to the Tourism Industry’ course. The vocational courses offered by DCT have been designed to provide a middle ground between on-the-job training and a purely theoretical degree. Students will learn practical and marketable skills that have a direct application in real life, and the training will open new doors, allowing students to explore a myriad of exciting and rewarding career opportunities. DCT’s courses are focused around five core faculties – Tourism, Events, Hospitality, Retail and Culinary Arts – and aims to help young people learn various trade and soft skills from established professionals in the industry. The college aims to educate and empower the future leaders, entrepreneurs and employees of Dubai’s expanding tourism industry, ensuring a steady pipeline of highly trained hospitality professionals for the city. Until now, there have been very limited options for this type of vocational training within Dubai. According to a 2014 Deloitte study, only one to three percent of Dubai’s students enrol in vocational education after high school, something which could lead to labour shortages within key industries in the future. With Dubai’s tourism and hospitality sectors set to employ a workforce of more than half a million by 2020, the dedicated industry-focused vocational training offered by DCT, has never been more important.

Dubai Culture & Arts Authority (Dubai Culture) recently participated in Dubai Tourism’s ‘Medyaf’ initiative, which is conducted regularly to provide opportunities to UAE nationals to acquire appropriate training and become adept professionals of any sector of the tourism and hospitality industry. The ultimate aim of the project is to build a force of skilful tourism professionals from within the country who could take care of the 20 million guests that are expected to visit Dubai for Expo 2020. Dubai Culture’s participation in this training programme reflects its commitment to nurturing and empowering national talent. Through this training programme, which was held at Shangri-La Hotel on July 18, Dubai Culture aimed to enhance the technical skills of its staff specialising in history, Islamic civilisation and tourism. It also launched a cultural tour guide programme and trained the first batch of employees in this initiative, who were drawn from across the Authority’s numerous heritage sites, including the recently unveiled Etihad Museum. It received a large number of applications from candidates seeking to get trained for the roles of cultural tour guide, customer service, etc. Source – Dubai Media Center

The Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment (DFRE), an agency of the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism), is gearing up to usher in the 10th edition of the “Eid in Dubai” celebrations with a diverse line-up of events designed to offer families, residents and visitors many memorable moments during the upcoming Eid Al Fitr. This year’s ‘Eid in Dubai – Eid Al Fitr’ celebrations promise to be as exciting as it can get with a range of events and activities for everyone to enjoy including concerts by Arab stars, family oriented events hosted by malls and Modhesh World, one of the most popular indoor edutainment destinations in the region. To celebrate the 10th edition, ‘Eid in Dubai’ will also have plenty of surprises and prizes for Eid shoppers including a six week sale from July 1 to August 12 by Dubai Summer Surprises, the ‘Shop, Spin & Win’ promotion run by the Dubai Shopping Malls Group, with the support of DFRE, and offering AED 250,000 in instant prizes. Saeed Mohammad Measam Al Falasi, Executive Director, Retail and Strategic Alliances, DFRE, said, “As an annual celebration that unites people from different nationalities from across Dubai, there is a great deal of anticipation surrounding Eid in Dubai events. In celebrating a decade of success, this year we want to ensure that everyone in the emirate feels the joy of Eid, in keeping with the true spirit of the slogan of Eid in Dubai – ‘United in Celebration’.”

This year has been carefully planned out by the Dubai Tourism authority to enhance the retail tourism sector with super sales that run for short periods of time attracting the GCC tourists and residents alike. Retail therapy starts early this summer in Dubai with the 3-day Super Sale, a new citywide retail initiative that will offer shoppers the opportunity to pick up amazing deals across a range of merchandise at participating outlets from May 18-20. Organised by the Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment (DFRE), an agency of the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism), the 3-day Super Sale will offer shoppers incredible discounts of between 30 – 90 % on selected items at retailers across the city.  Saeed Mohammad Measam Al Falasi, Executive Director, Retail and Strategic Alliances, DFRE, said: “The 3-Day Super Sale initiative is part of our robust strategy revolving around the Retail Calendar to further boost the emirate’s retail sector with regular promotional periods that benefit both retailers and shoppers. Running promotions that offer retailers numerous options to boost sales during this time of the year will further enhance the emirate’s appeal as a year-round shopping hub, and helps us build on Dubai’s strong position as only the second city after London to host the most number of retail brands. The timing is perfect for shoppers, coming early in the summer and just a few days before the start of the month of Ramadan, followed by the Eid holiday period. We expect to re-energise the retail sector at this event, as large number of shoppers are bound to avail themselves of three days of huge savings.” According to a report by the Dubai Chamber of …

Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism), announced the launch of “Dubai Expert,” an online educational game that has been created exclusively for travel agents. The announcement was made to travel professionals attending this year’s Arabian Travel Market in Dubai. Created in collaboration with the Dubai College of Tourism (DCT) and KTM Advance, a specialist in e-learning, the learning tool is a marked departure from traditional training programmes. It features an engaging interface that includes information on Dubai’s tourism attractions in an easily-digestible format that will enable agents to promote the Emirate as the ideal holiday destination to their customers from around the world. Speaking at ATM 2017, Issam Kazim, CEO of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DCTCM), said: “Our partnerships with travel agents are critical to us as we look to expand our influence and reach across industry channels and stakeholders that influence tourists looking to visit Dubai. This also means that we need to keep developing new tools that allow us and our partners to highlight what makes Dubai a ‘must-visit’ destination. With the ‘Dubai Expert’ platform, we have used technology innovation to transcend typical training programmes and create an experience that enhances their knowledge of Dubai, so they can build customised itineraries that will attract more visitors. ‘Dubai Expert’ has been created to facilitate this process and is part of our continued endeavour to achieve our strategic goal of welcoming 20 million visitors by 2020.” ‘Dubai Expert’ operates as a turn-based card game, where participants will need to select the best cards – each with an attraction in the city – from an automatically generated deck, to create an ideal itinerary for a …

Dubai’s tourism sector sustained the momentum of its strong 2017 start, with the emirate’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) reporting a 11 per cent increase in overnight visitation in the first three months of the year compared to the same period in 2016. January to March 2017 saw 4.57 million travellers visit the city, reflecting more than double the growth achieved in the first quarter of last year. Among Dubai’s top 20 source markets for inbound tourism, China and Russia continued to top the growth trajectory charts with unparalleled 64 per cent and 106 per cent increases over Q1 2016, delivering 230,000 and 126,000 tourists respectively. Attributable in large part to the positive regulatory changes enabling citizens from both countries to obtain free visas-on-arrival in the UAE, this performance spike has resulted in both countries moving up in their rankings as key feeder markets for Dubai, with China at number four and Russia at number 11, edging closer to a return to the top 10. Retaining their stronghold on the top three positions were India, KSA and UK, accounting collectively for 30 per cent of total Q1 visitation to Dubai, with India becoming the first ever market to record nearly 580,000 visitors in any one quarter, with a massive 23 per cent growth in arrivals between January and March. Despite its 8 per cent drop over 2016, driven due to a backward shift in annual school holidays, KSA continued to drive volumes with 440,000 visitors, while UK rallied growth across the mega markets with its 5 per cent increase to mitigate the declines from KSA and Oman, which rounded off the top 5 with 214,000 overnight guests. …

Dubai Tourism’s two major initiatives, being carried out by its Dubai College of Tourism  (DCT) –  ‘Medyaf’ (Generous Host) and the ‘UAE Tour Guide Programme’ under its Emiratisation Programme, are aimed at training UAE nationals for a future career in the tourism industry. Dubai Tourism was at this year’s Careers UAE, which ended a few days ago at the Dubai World Trade Centre. At this event, DCT is also promoting the programme of Dubai Summer Surprises (DSS), the summer extravaganza run by the Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment (DFRE), an agency of Dubai Tourism, to recruit young UAE nationals as volunteers during DSS 2017. The participating partners of Dubai Tourism representing various sectors including retail, hospitality and entertainment are: Emaar, Jumeirah Group, Dubai Parks and Resorts, Chalhoub Group, Shangri-La Hotel, Millennium Hotels and Resorts, AccorHotels, Rotana Management Cooperation, Habtoor Grand Resort, Marriott International, JA Resorts and Hotels, IMG Worlds of Adventure, Plazzo Versace, Hilton and InterContinental Hotels Group. Essa Bin Hadher, General Manager, Dubai College of Tourism, said:  “Young Emirati men and women are being encouraged by the leadership of the country to participate in all aspects of development of this nation and contribute towards economic growth. As a result, Dubai’s rapid development has seen the emergence of highly qualified young UAE nationals in the local workforce, both in government and private sectors, and more and more of our nationals are getting actively involved in imparting their knowledge and skills in diverse sectors. Against this backdrop, and based on our commitment to support the on-going programme of Emiratisation, we have joined hands with our partners in the private sector at this year’s Careers UAE to provide promising young UAE nationals …

Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) reported a 12 per cent year-on-year growth over the first two months of 2017, which saw Dubai welcoming just over three million visitors, nearly four times the rate of the previous year. Supported by growth in all key markets, China and Russia in particular drove the volumes and set the stage for a strong first quarter result. This period witnessed a 60 per cent growth in overnight tourists from China with January alone peaking at a dramatic 102 per cent, while attracting a total of 157,000 Chinese visitors across just the first two months. Reflecting an even more significant percentage increase, Russian visitation jumped 84 per cent over the same period last year with February delivering a massive 140 per cent volume increase to bring a total of 65,000 travellers in the first two months. Consequently, both contributing countries moved up in their rankings as key source markets for inbound tourism to Dubai with China entering the top 4 for the first time and Russia moving to just outside the top 10, up 4 places from 15. His Excellency Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General, Dubai Tourism, said: “As we continue to invest in raising consideration for Dubai as the destination of choice for global travellers, our focus at Dubai Tourism is equally on increasing Dubai’s accessibility and removing barriers to travel by working closely with partners and stakeholders in the public and private sectors on both a federal and emirate level. Ultimately our collective aim is to make it as easy and seamless as possible for any prospective tourist from our diversified base of source markets to visit and revisit Dubai. We …