TravTalk Middle East Online Magazine
As international borders are steadily opening and COVID-19 restrictions being lifted from most destinations, it is almost akin to a new era for travel and tourism industry. At the recently concluded fourth edition of the Gulf Travel Show, Nasir Jamal Khan, CEO, Al Naboodah Travel moderated an interesting session on business reaching pre-pandemic levels.
Shehara Rizly
The UAE set an example for other countries in the Middle East by opening its borders early and ensuring that all safety measures were taken. The leadership in the UAE opened its doors to visitors not only so that they have a destination with many offerings, but also to ensure that it is a safe haven for every visitor. The development drew praise at the fourth edition of the Gulf Travel Show (GTS).
Nasir Jamal Khan, CEO, Al Naboodah Travel, shared, “Last time we met we discussed about the losses in the industry, but today we are happy to be speaking on the positive changes for both inbound and outbound destinations. Although IATA shared earlier that recovery may take time as far as 2024/2025 to reach pre pandemic levels, we have seen a fantastic improvement reaching way beyond expectations.”
Khand thanked three panellists, who also shares their views with the travel trade at the GTS.
Daniel Rosado, Director Spain Tourism for GCC Countries, said, “I would say old is the new as we are going back to the previous activities that were halted due to the pandemic and now restart our promotions more actively. However, I must add that Expo provided us an opportunity to once again meet the trade physically and conduct programmes for the trade partners. Opening the destination earlier just like Dubai, we are happy to announce that we reached or exceeded pre pandemic levels in 2021. Our numbers when compared to 2019 July with 2021 were far greater as we placed the GCC countries such as UAE, KSA and Qatar in the safe list, which brought us many visitors over the summer. Another factor is our vaccination drive, which is on the same level as the UAE vaccinating over 90 per cent of the population.”
Matthias Albrecht, Director, Switzerland tourism, talked about the initiatives taken to welcome the GCC market. “We are lucky that Switzerland is fully open for GCC and UAE for all travellers. Over the past few months we saw Emirates restarting double daily flights, followed by Etihad and Swiss. I must also add that from July to December 2021 we witnessed better figures than 2019 pre pandemic times. We expect a strong summer this year as borders are now fully open and we can welcome more visitors to our destination.”
Ivana Karanikic, General Manager, Prolingua Travel, said, “We share the same sentiments from western Balkan region as we were also open during the pandemic, at first since flights were not in operation we had visitors from our neighbouring countries, thereafter we witnessed growth especially from the GCC region in summer 2021. Expo was the platform that provided us an opportunity to promote all our offerings to the travel trade in the UAE. Over the past year Montenegro and Albania had exponential growth in terms of visitors from the UAE, mainly due to air connectivity with flydubai’s direct connection. Bosnia and Herzegovina are two other such destinations which caught the attention of the UAE travellers. We are now looking at promoting different packages targeting the luxury high-end market and the women travellers who seek bespoke experiences.”
Albrecht shared that in Switzerland they have been able to decide what is best for the country with people engagement, which gave them the advantage of staying open. The strong relationship between the UAE and Switzerland ensured a much higher visitor numbers in the past year. Rosado reiterated, “We are changing from pandemic to endemic, we kept on adapting to measures. Spain and UAE was in the top three destinations in terms of vaccinations and it has well paid off.” Karanikic shared, “We see a lot of last minute bookings from this region and they opt for outdoor and cruising packages not in big groups but smaller ones.”
