Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi) together with the UAE national airline
Etihad Airways plan to expand their successful 'Access Abu Dhabi' trade engagement programme to five new markets this year.

With this, the duo aims to take the campaign’s outreach to 10 countries across four continents.

The year-long campaign has already notched up considerable success with hotel guest booking hikes from its initial target markets of Germany, the UK, Russia, India and Australia, they stated.

Now, for 2014, the programme will reach out to potential partners in China, France, Italy, Brazil and the US.

“During its first year of operation Access Abu Dhabi progressed 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,” remarked Jasem Al Darmaki, the 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," he noted.

According to him, 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.”

Peter Baumgartner, Etihad’s chief commercial officer said: "We are delighted with the success of the Abu Dhabi trade engagement programme and excited to collaborate with TCA once again and build on its success."
 
"We have already started engaging top tour operators in Italy and France and will start similar missions in the US, specifically targeting New York and Los Angeles," he noted.

"In South America, we will focus on Brazil to coincide with Sao Paolo’s promotion as a rising Latin American destination at the World Travel Market Latin America in April of this year," added Baumgartner.

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.-TradeArabia News Service