APAC Travel Marketplace sets stage for Abu Dhabi's Asian conquest

With the objective of enhancing engagements and increasing the footfall from its largest source market, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Abu Dhabi recently hosted the first edition of APAC Travel Marketplace that attracted over 200 travel and tourism stakeholders from across the Asia Pacific region.

- Rashida Afsar

With over 200 travel trade professionals from across Asia Pacific and about 60 tourism stakeholders from Abu Dhabi as exhibitors in attendance, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Abu Dhabi, DCT Abu Dhabi, recently organised its first-ever APAC Travel Marketplace in the ‘Garden City’ of Al Ain in the emirate.

The event was organised with two key objectives, one was to increase the footfall from Asia-Pacific region, already the largest source market of tourists for Abu Dhabi and which also has the largest potential for growth in the future. The other primary objective was to promote Al Ain, a UNESCO World Heritage site, as a key standalone destination for tourists visiting not just Abu Dhabi or the United Arab Emirates, but the entire region of the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

The APAC Travel Marketplace is part of Abu Dhabi’s overall strategy to promote the destination across the world in a more aggressive manner and to increase the interaction between tourism stakeholders like hotels, Destination Management Companies and tourism attractions from Abu Dhabi and travel agents and buyers from different regions of the world by creating meeting platforms on a regional basis.

As an invite-only B2B event, it underscored DCT Abu Dhabi’s commitment to strengthening ties with the APAC travel trade while showcasing the emirate’s unique offerings. On the occasion, Abdulla Yousuf, Director of International Operations, DCT Abu Dhabi, explained the growing importance of the APAC region and its place within the global source markets for the Emirate.