{"id":19813,"date":"2025-05-08T18:48:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T14:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/?p=19813"},"modified":"2025-05-08T18:48:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T14:48:42","slug":"marketplace-middle-east-visits-the-arabian-travel-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/2025\/05\/08\/marketplace-middle-east-visits-the-arabian-travel-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Marketplace Middle East Visits The Arabian Travel Market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a new episode of\u00a0Marketplace Middle East<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>CNN\u2019s\u00a0Eleni Giokos<\/strong>\u00a0attends the Arabian Travel Market, the Middle East\u2019s leading international travel and tourism event. This year\u2019s theme is \u2018enhanced connectivity\u2019, displaying the continually evolving travel industry. According to the World Travel and Tourism council, this industry is expected to contribute $11.7 trillion to the global economy in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United Nations World Tourism Organisation says that 2024 marked a virtual 99% recovery of international arrivals to pre-pandemic levels.\u00a0Natalia Bayona<\/strong>, the Executive Director of UN Tourism tells Giokos, \u201cToday, more than ever, confidence and trust are the key words if we want tourism to become sustainable. And today, when we see the facts and figures we see, that of course, the Middle East is gaining a lot of growth when it comes to tourism arrivals, especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the strongest-performing region, the Middle East has not only regained its international arrivals back to pre-pandemic levels, its surpassed it, by 32%.\u00a0Abdulaziz Ali Al-Mawlawi<\/strong>, the CEO of Visit Qatar, reflects on how major events have played their part in boosting this industry, \u201cHosting the FIFA World Cup really propelled Qatar on the stage [\u2026]. The numbers during 2022 were 2.56 million, including the World Cup. So, after that, in 2023, we achieved 4.1 million.\u00a0Now, in 2024, we achieved 5.1, the numbers are increasing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al-Mawlawi explains the potential coming from other countries to increase this boost, \u201cWe are planning our marketing based on the preferred markets, and we can see a lot of potentials coming from China, India, and the far west market. But this is all depending with the connectivity because we need to work hand by hand with Qatar Airways\u00a0to study which markets or which cities have a better potential than the others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giokos speaks with\u00a0Jane Sun<\/strong>, the CEO of\u00a0Trip.com\u00a0Group, about the future technology trends that she is anticipating; \u201cPersonalised trip is very popular on our platform. So, normally, we have this product if we know how many customers are travelling, what\u2019s their budget? What\u2019s their date will automatically personalise their tools for our customers? And that\u2019s growing very well for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Middle East is forecast to generate 2.14 million new jobs in its tourism sector by 2034, almost half of that figure is expected to be in Saudi Arabia.\u00a0Fahd Hamidaddin<\/strong>, the CEO of Saudi Tourism Authority, explains how he plans to keep this growth momentum going, \u201cThey say, build the destination and they will come. They also say that if you build a successful airline, you build a successful destination. They also say if you build a good airport and aviation hub, you build a destination. We\u2019re doing all the three and the three haven\u2019t started.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hamidaddin tells Giokos how he\u2019s been able to break through the negative perceptions that tensions in the region have created, \u201cFor a destination like ours which is, it\u2019s so large and so diverse, we\u2019ve only been growing, despite all the unrest globally and the unrest regionally. Now we see tariffs are also impacting inbound travel to the US, increasing inflation in many countries, affecting outbound from China and I think the dust hasn\u2019t rested. But we\u2019re an eye where the opportunity for every challenge rises and we make sure we\u2019re the first to capture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rising costs could give emerging destinations the chance to grow as tourists look for lesser\u00a0known countries, such as the Sultanate of Oman.\u00a0Oman\u2019s Minister of Heritage and Tourism,\u00a0H.E. Salem bin Mohammed Al Mahrouqi<\/strong>, describes the attraction Oman has for tourists, \u201cStability, maturity, experiences, heritage, landscape.More Russians are coming to Oman. The Chinese as well. The numbers are increasing in spite of the regional condition taking place. We are keen to mitigate the impact and therefore are opening Oman to new markets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al Mahrouqi ends the show by explaining how investment all over the country is being prioritised to engage with more tourists, \u201cThe priority is to push the investment to other areas that have not seen more investment, comparing to the capital Muscat and\u00a0Salalah in the South. The island of Masirah. The location the climate that it provides, the migrations of birds coming from Russia, from Europe, on their way back to Africa. That, by itself, is an attractive aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a new episode of\u00a0Marketplace Middle East,\u00a0CNN\u2019s\u00a0Eleni Giokos\u00a0attends the Arabian Travel Market, the Middle East\u2019s leading international travel and tourism event. This year\u2019s theme is \u2018enhanced connectivity\u2019, displaying the continually evolving travel industry. According to the World Travel and Tourism council, this industry is expected to contribute $11.7 trillion to the global economy in 2025.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19817,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19813\/revisions\/19817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}