Print Preview : Abu Dhabi gets major meetings boost

Abu Dhabi gets major meetings boost
The Arabian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi, which has recently seen a rapid surge in its meetings infrastructure, has received a major business tourism boost with three new key events slated for next year.

The latest to be unveiled is the World Health Care Congress Middle East, being billed as ‘The Davos of Health Care,’ and which has won the backing of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA), which manages, helps develop and promotes the emirate’s tourism industry. The event will be organised by the USA’s World Congress Inc., a leading global provider of healthcare congresses and will be staged next December, in collaboration with the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi.

To run annually, for three years from 2010 – 2012, the congress will target healthcare leaders and feature high level content covering research, policies and insurance with delegates being allowed to register for individual streams.

“We envisage the event attracting a high regional and international turnout of health care executives, providers, and government leaders to explore fresh ideas and unique insights,” said Gillian Taylor, Business Tourism Manager, ADTA. “The topics to be addressed will be actionable and strategic, designed to address escalating health care costs, challenges in quality, new models for finance and improvements in delivery.

“The congress will convene all stakeholder segments including the ‘buy side’ employers and all of the groups making up health care delivery. The congress will tackle pressing issues and gather critical audience groups.”

Meanwhile, March next year will see the staging of the first Abu Dhabi Media Summit in which 400 invited media representatives will gather in the capital of the United Arab Emirates for top-level dialogue. The summit will focus on emerging media in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The co-chairs of the summit read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the media worth and includes: the President and Chairman of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch; Tim Armstrong the CEO of AOL; Lee Seok Chae, Chairman of KT Corporatin; Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman & CEO of Innovation Works; Maurice Levy, Chairman of the PublicisGroupe; Didier Lombard, Chairman of Orange/France Telecom; Kishore Lulla, Chairman and CEO of Eros International; Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of CEO of Bharti Enterprises and Dr. Prannoy Roy, Executive Chairperson of NDTV.

“The Abu Dhabi Media Summit is set to become a tremendous meeting of the minds. I can’t think of a better place to be talking about the future of media,” said Rupert Murdoch. “Abu Dhabi sits at the nexus of East and West, of developing and developed, of our media present and its future.”

The invitation-only inaugural summit will be held at Abu Dhabi’s latest icon building – the Yas Hotel from March 9-12.

The three-day summit, created by the Abu Dhabi Media Company, produced by PublicisLive, which also produces the World Economic Forum in Davos, and backed by the ADTA, Etihad Airways, Mubadala and twofour54, will feature a unique combination of high-profile public sessions, closed-door discussions and private conversations, bringing together top-tier global media players and their counterparts from emerging markets. Targeted sectors include mobile, broadband, traditional television, print, entertainment, news, music, advertising & marketing, venture capital and equity finance, with special emphasis on the Middle East, the Sub-continent, East Asia and China.

From December 6-10, 2010 Abu Dhabi will also host a major new international confex, World Green Tourism Congress (WGTC) at Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Centre (ADNEC).

The event, the first-of-its-kind in the Arabian Gulf, is being organised by the UAE's Streamline Marketing Group (SMG) with ADTA, which manages, helps develop and promote the emirate's tourism industry, as headline sponsor.

This is the first meetings industry initiative to emerge from the authority's Advantage Abu Dhabi (AAD) incentive programme launched earlier this year to catalyse and seed new business tourism and meetings concepts.

"This congress reflects the core values of the Abu Dhabi Government's 2030 plan which clearly identifies tourism as a key economic diversification driver and environmental sustainability as an underlying fundamental of all we do," explained Taylor.

"With the event aiming to influence the integration of eco-tourism principles into the operations and policies of tourism industry players it has huge synergies with the authority's overall vision of becoming an outstanding, globally recognised and sustainable destination of distinction."

The event - a conference with a supporting exhibition - will be a forum for key industry leaders and associations to discuss the environmental challenges facing the tourism industry, highlighting 'green' initiatives, technologies and solutions currently being integrated into mainstream industry practices.

Streamline contends the event holds out huge benefits for the Arabian Gulf and that Abu Dhabi stood out as "the strongest host city for such an event."

"The case for Abu Dhabi was a powerful one," explained Rick Theobald of SMG. "It is the capital of the UAE, easily accessible from Europe and Asia and has consistently demonstrated its commitment to the environment by establishing a core network of organisations to address the 'green' issue with the Abu Dhabi government being behind the ground-breaking Masdar 'clean energy' city initiative.

"Abu Dhabi has an excellent business tourism infrastructure comprising conference venues, airport, hotels, tour and transport operators and it will benefit from the event through increased hotel occupancy and other exhibitor and delegates spend across retail and food & beverage. The summit will also reinforce Abu Dhabi's very healthy reputation as a determined and tangible supporter of environmental protection. We anticipate in the long run that the congress will help establish Abu Dhabi as an international leader in responsible tourism and as a destination of choice for the environmentally aware traveller.

"There is currently no dedicated event of this nature in the region and whilst the objective is to make World Green Tourism Congress a global responsible tourism event, the significance of its location cannot be ignored. With the Middle East as a crucial tourism and business destination, and specifically with Abu Dhabi leading the way in environmental and cultural initiatives, the congress has enormous potential to become the recognised platform for the overall 'green' tourism industry. As individuals and corporations' awareness of their social responsibility increases, so too do the opportunities for the event to grow in importance."

Streamline is looking to attract leading international environmental tourism professionals as key note speakers and believes the congress will help "effect change in business practices in the UAE and the Gulf region as a whole."

Targeted participants span a variety of disciplines in both the public and private sectors. In its first year, Streamline anticipates attracting 200 conference delegates, 100 exhibiting companies and around 1,500 visitor professionals.

ADTA says additional projects are currently being evaluated via Advantage Abu Dhabi. Structured as a venture capital-type apparatus, AAD is designed to support the lucrative MICE segment to realise the direct tourism benefits it engenders and to ensure that the business tourism sector serves as an important growth pillar for Abu Dhabi's long-term economic, social, human resource and infrastructure development goals.

Under the initiative AAD lead-arranges financial and/or non financial resources to enable meeting planners and exhibition and conference organisers to catalyse and actualise new business events in Abu Dhabi across 12 strategic sectors. These are: energy, petrochemicals, metals, aviation/aerospace/defence, pharmaceuticals /biotech/life sciences, tourism, healthcare, education, transport/trade/logistics, media, financial services and telecommunications.

“With a host of new and innovative meetings facilities having opened within Abu Dhabi and Advantage Abu Dhabi pressing home an incentive, the emirate is living up to its mantle as ‘The Happening Place For Business Tourism,’” said Taylor. Vicky Karantzavelou - Thursday, November 26, 2009