DTCM bags two awards at WTM-2007 in London

Selling Long Haul magazine awards have been given after the travel agents voted the DTCM UK and Ireland representation office for offering the best overall service to the trade and also for providing the best all-round range of training initiatives to the travel agents.

Mr. Ian Scott, new director of the DTCM's UK and Ireland Representation Office, was presented with a brace of Selling Long Haul awards by Mr. Martin Steady, managing director of BMI Publications which produces Selling Long Haul Magazine.

The awards are tribute to the effort that the DTCM puts into ensuring that tour operators are properly educated about the emirate, using such tools as the Dubai Expert online training programme, familiarization trips and the Destination Dubai Tourism Manual, the 2008 edition of which was unveiled at the world's biggest tourism trade show.

The DTCM's UK and Ireland representative office scooped several prestigious awards and received industry recognition for its efforts to promote the emirate to consumers and the travel industry. Accolades awarded to the DTCM in 2006 include leading travel industry publications such as Selling Long Haul, Short Breaks & Holidays, Irish Travel Trade News and Travel Trade Gazette - all of which recognized the DTCM as a major player and trendsetter within the industry.

In 2006, the UK and Ireland office of the DTCM was to be voted 'Best UK-based Tourist Office Serving a Long Haul Destination' by Selling Long Haul - the UK and Ireland's leading travel trade monthly magazine dedicated to educating and informing agents on how to sell long-haul destinations and products. Its sister publication, Short Breaks & Holidays, named the UK and Ireland office of the DTCM as 'Best UK tourist office promoting North Africa / Middle East' in its Travel Awards 2006.

The DTCM is targeting to attract 1.4 million visitors from the highly-promising UK and Ireland markets by the year 2010, up from the present nearly 700,000 tourists. Last year, nearly 700,000 British guests stayed with Dubai's rapidly-expanding hotels and hotel apartments, making the UK-Ireland the top source market for the emirate's booming tourism industry. Presently, about 200 tour operators are featuring Dubai in the holiday packages in this prime European market. About 500 tour operators, travel agents and media representatives from the UK and Ireland were brought to Dubai on familiarization tours of the emirate last year.

The DTCM Director General, Mr. Khalid A bin Sulayem, said: 'The UK has remained the top source market for Dubai's fast-expanding, high-performing tourism industry. This year's edition of WTM will be utilized to further consolidate our position in the world market, especially the European countries which has been significantly contributing to the increased number of visitors of the emirate each passing year.'

In the first half of 2007, Dubai hotel establishments played a host to 356,259 guests from the UK market, up by seven per cent compared with the corresponding period last year.

The growth in the number of guests from the UK to Dubai has been consistently strong. From 106,706 guests in 1996, the numbers went up to 348,477 in the year 2001 and 687,138 in the year 2006. The two-way trade between the UK and Dubai in the year 2006 was AED13.24 billion. The number of UK passengers using the Dubai International Airport last year was 2.9 million, up by 13 per cent compared with the previous year. The number of weekly flights between Dubai and the UK during the 2006 was 279.