Abu Dhabi to host World Green Tourism Congress 2010

To be held December 6-8, 2010 at a major venue in Abu Dhabi, the event, the first-of-its-kind in the Arabian Gulf, is being organised by the UAE's Streamline Marketing Group (SMG) with Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (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 Dayne Lim, Product Development Director, ADTA.

"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.

"We have already received interest from a number of prominent associations connected with green initiatives and hope to firm up partnership agreements in the not too distant future," said Rich Theobald of SMG.

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," added Theobald. "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 with a second approved concept being finalised. "This again will have significant impact on the tourism sector," said Dayne Lim.

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.