The racing cars, international celebrities and spectators from all over the world have departed since the end of the Formula One Grand Prix on Yas Island last month. But Aldar, Abu Dhabi’s leading property development, management and investment company, has just started to showcase its new retail, leisure and entertainment destination to industry professionals and the public.
Yas Island was the host venue for the inaugural Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix which took place last month, at the state-of-the-art Yas Marina Circuit which will host a full calendar of motorsports events throughout the year.
The Yas Hotel is the flagship location for Aldar Hotels & Hospitality. The first hotel to span a race track, the hotel has an extraordinary 5,000-LED panel gridshell that drapes the structure in a vibrant shroud of lights. Yas Marina will see the completion of the Yas Yacht Club and retail centre later this year. The Yas Links Golf Course, the first of its kind in the region, will welcome its first players towards the end of this year.
Further, the Ferrari World Abu Dhabi will become the world’s largest indoor theme park and the first ever Ferrari theme park in the world when it opens in 2010.
The park will host more than 20 state-of-the-art attractions, each designed to bring to life a different part of the Ferrari story. Beyond that, a major retail complex and additional leisure parks and residential developments have been planned.
The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA) had commented that all 16,000 hotel rooms in the city were fully booked with 100-per-cent occupancy levels during the Formula One weekend. Faisal Al Sheikh, head major events division, ADTA, comments: “Sport events play a key role in the Abu Dhabi 2030 strategy and we will continue to engage and aspire to bring more tourists into the city further leading to increased hotel occupancies. On top of that the media exposure that these events bring is unbelievable and will reflect to the economy positively. ADTA has set a new target of attracting 2.3 million hotel guests by 2012 and all these initiatives, either sport or cultural will cater to that objective.
“Events like the Formula One will drive tourism and visitor experience to great heights. The city is booming and we are going to see a lot of changes in infrastructure and lifestyle. We had the luxurious Qasr Al Sarb desert resort which opened last month, six hotels on the Yas Island – all these are the hardware, but the software is the events and the product that ADTA with other government partners and the private sector are working towards. Major events deliver destination awareness and economic and cultural benefits to Abu Dhabi.”
Another feather in its cap is the capital’s addition to the top 10 cities in the world to visit next year by the travel publisher Lonely Planet. Abu Dhabi is featured alongside cities such as Istanbul, Turkey; Kyoto, Japan; Sarajevo, Bosnia and Vancouver, Canada, in the new Best in Travel 2010 book.
“It is an accumulative achievement. It is the result of our hard work in the last five years in developing our products,” Al Sheikh added.
Among the experiences the guide recommends are trips to the Empty Quarter, kayaking around the emirate’s uninhabited islands and strolling along the Corniche.