The world’s largest annual airport show today concluded in Dubai, UAE, on a successful note with the B2B platform witnessing strong industry engagement and over 8,000 professionals attending the event.

The Airport Show, held at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC), drew over 300 exhibitors from 40 countries.

The event also saw successful hosting of two co-located events, Global Airport Leaders’ Forum (GALF) and Travel Catering Expo (TCE).

Daniyal Qureshi, group exhibition director at Reed Exhibitions Middle East, said the events have been a resounding success in every aspect and proved beyond doubt the importance of the Menasa region for the global aviation industry stakeholders.

The show attracted 127 hosted buyers, a 38 per cent increase over the previous edition. As many as 53 civil aviation authorities, airlines and other aviation-related bodies represented in the programme. This year, a ‘Meet the Buyer’  programme was introduced for the Ground Handling, Air Traffic Management (ATM) and Aviation Security segments.

He said: “We had 2,912 meetings at the hosted buyers lounge for the Airport Show and 859 meetings for the Travel Catering Expo (TCE) in addition to 116 meetings with Dubai Aviation Engineering Projects (DAEP) and 236 meetings with VIP visitors for both the shows. In total, 4123 pre scheduled meetings took place during the three days.”

The show’s other key attractions were Airport Connect, a pre-event business matchmaking service for buyers and sellers, Airport Projects Showcase and Innovation Podium. Major airport development in the Middle East involving close to $100 billion investments were showcased, while as many as 30 speakers took the Innovation Podium facility to share insights into the latest products and technologies that their companies developed and launched.

A total of 102 exhibitors participated in the six country pavilions – Germany, UK, Switzerland, France, Italy and North America (US and Canada). An all-time high of about 50 new technologies, systems and solutions were unveiled at the show by the exhibitors.

The second edition of Travel Catering Expo (TCE) attracted a total of 50 exhibitors from various countries, including the new comers, India, Kuwait, Kenya, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malawi, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Thailand. The Expo attracted 2000 trade visitors from over 20 countries. Key features of TCE included TCE Business Connect, a dedicated programme to connect buyers and suppliers.  

TCE’s hosted buyers programme attracted over 36 participants and 19 authorities from 14 countries, including Bahrain, India, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malawi, Mauritius, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand and the UAE. About 859 meetings for the Travel Catering Expo (TCE) were held between the hosted buyers and TCE exhibitors, said Qureshi.

It has been announced by the organisers that the 16th edition of Airport Show will take from May 16 to 18 next year at the DICEC. They are confident about the annual show getting even more bigger next year taking into account the ceaseless interest of the global companies in the regional markets, especially of the GCC and UAE. Up to 75 per cent 2015 edition exhibitors have confirmed their participation in the next year’s show. - TradeArabia News Service