ABU DHABI Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi) and Etihad Airways, the national airline of the UAE, are expanding their successful Access Abu Dhabi trade engagement programme to five new markets this year – taking the campaign’s outreach to 10 countries across four continents.
The year-long campaign for 2014, will reach out to potential partners in China, France, Italy, Brazil and the US.“During its first year of operations, Access Abu Dhabi worked on 38 destination co-marketing initiatives, undertook 10 destination familiarisation trips for 755 travel agents, 250 free, independent traveller agents and their staff and completed successful partner engagement missions in our initial target markets,” said HE Jasem Al Darmaki, deputy director general, TCA Abu Dhabi.“We have experienced strong results – particularly from Germany and the UK – with a significant increase in the length of a guest stay emerging through packages sold by our travel and tour operator partners. The programme was an influencing factor for last year’s record hotel performance when arrivals reached 2.8 million and guest nights rose 26 per cent to 8.8 million. We anticipate a similar influencing pattern for our 2014 target of 3.1 million guests and guest night uplift of 10 per cent year-on-year compounded growth.”The Access Abu Dhabi team is also looking into a tailored version of its programme to address the specific needs of the GCC market. “We anticipate having some in place within the next few months which will deliver bespoke solutions for this important market on our doorstep,” added Al Darmaki.