Travel trade professionals from across the world gathered in their thousands to attend the three-day Arabian Travel Market (ATM) Virtual, which debuted on June 1-3, 2020.
The online event which attracted almost 12,000 attendees from 140 countries around the world, focused on the ME region’s tourism sector, addressed emerging trends, as well as the opportunities and the challenges which are directly impacting the travel and tourism industry amid the COVID-19 global health pandemic and beyond.
In total, the event facilitated 11,301 prescheduled one-to-one meetings, of which over 92% were rated four or five, out of five stars. A series of one-to-one pre-scheduled 30-minute meetings between editors, exhibitors, and buyers also took place, and 23 live video sessions included Q&As and polls which ran alongside the presentations to enable audience interaction. Overall, the webinars had more than 24,000 views over the course of three days.
Danielle Curtis, Exhibition Director ME, Arabian Travel Market (ATM), says: “Considering that this was a debut event, the outcome clearly validated our strategy to virtually support and guide the region’s travel and tourism industry. The resilience and determination to get through these challenging times was clearly evident.
“It also underscored our commitment to organise an event with positive and constructive business insight and opinion, as well as offering networking opportunities across the entire community.
“There were so many highlights during the event, that it would be extremely difficult to single out any particular session. The event was seamless, each session complemented the next and it is also fair to say that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.”
The highlight of the opening day was an interview with Sir Tim Clark, President of Emirates Airline. During a discussion with aviation expert John Strickland, Sir Tim predicted a degree of tourism recovery during the course of 2021, and expectations for Emirates to be operating its network prior to COVID-19 by 22/23, 23/24.
