Dubai eyes doubling of business visitors by 2020

Dubai Business Events (DBE), a division of Dubai Tourism & Commerce Marketing (DTCM), which promotes Dubai as a dynamic host city for incentive travel, conferences and business events, is keen to double the number of MICE visitors to the emirate by 2020. Spelling out its strategy, Steen Jakobsen, Director, DBE, said that target is to attract three to four million business visitors every year through 2020, which will lead to doubling of the number of business visitors of the overall tourism visitations in the next five years. Inbound tourism numbers to Dubai in 2014 were 11.6 million, and the share of business visitors constituted 20 per cent of the overall visitations. Dubai Tourism has set a target of 20 million international visitations to the city by 2020.

Speaking to an international media delegation in Dubai, Jakobsen said that the DBE will be employing a three-pronged strategy to achieve the targeted growth over the next five years. This includes tracking of international events, understand their rotation pattern and bid for them; explore developing new events in Dubai and grow them into international events; and work closely with global event organisers, associations, etc., to attract more business visitors for events happening in Dubai. Jakobsen cited couple of expositions like Gulfood and ArabHealth, which have been developed locally and evolved into international events over the years, which together attracts over one lakh visitors to the city every year.

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