The events are to be held over the coming years and will bring in an additional 135,000 visitors.
Dubai won 232 bids for hosting business events in 2022, almost twice as many as the previous year. This represented a 95 per cent growth in the number of successful bids from 2021 and a 92 per cent increase in the number of delegates added to the pipeline. The events are set to be held over the coming years, and will bring in an additional 135,000 visitors including scientists, thought-leaders and business executives to Dubai, official news agency WAM reported.
Dubai Business Events (DBE), which is part of the Department of Economy and Tourism, collaborated with several stakeholders for the event bids. These include Al Safeer Congress Ambassadors and the public and private sector entities they represent, industry partners including Dubai World Trade Centre and Emirates, and hotels and professional congress organisers (PCOs) across the city. Dubai also secured bids for 57 association conferences in 2022, the highest achieved by DBE.
The major association events pocketed in 2022 included the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine WorldLab Congress 2024, International Congress of Endocrinology 2024, World Sports Medicine Congress 2024, World Congress of the International Society of Radiographers and Radiological Technologies 2026, and International Symposium on Dental Hygiene 2028.
“Dubai’s success in capturing business events in 2022, especially international association conferences, will play a vital role in further propelling innovation, professional development and knowledge exchange in their respective sectors and industries, and elevate Dubai’s standing within them,” said Ahmed Al Khaja, CEO of Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment.
“Combined with Dubai’s own home-grown trade shows and conferences, as well as other meetings being brought to the city, the business events sector continues to form an important pillar of Dubai’s destination offering and tourism growth.”
Meanwhile, the corporate meetings and incentive travel programmes that Dubai won bids for include IBM India and Europe Incentives 2023, Terpel Convention 2023, Envista EMEA Summit 2023 and Mary Kay Mexico Incentive 2024.
DBE conducted almost 200 global sales activities, including study missions, roadshows and participation in major trade shows.
“Engaging with meeting planners globally throughout 2022, we consistently heard that they were impressed with the way in which Dubai’s business events sector rapidly rebounded in the wake of the pandemic and appreciative of the platform the city provided them to safely resume their events,” added Steen Jakobsen, associate vice president, Dubai Business Events.
“This has built on many years of efforts to consistently develop Dubai’s offerings, across not only the business events sector but also the knowledge economy, and drive awareness of it among meeting planners and association executives.”
