Dubai, UAE – Travel and tourism companies in the Middle East are turning to social media and digital platforms to stay relevant and expand their businesses.
This has significantly changed the way tourists discover and explore new destinations, creating a feedback loop that continually drives content creation and visits.
Several Arab Gulf countries are ambitiously trying to turn themselves into major tourist destinations, and some have already had considerable success.
Foremost is Dubai, whose ability to develop a brand image contributed to its success. When most people hear ‘Dubai’ they envision luxury, a futuristic modern city, and a melange of people, food, cultures, and goods.
Challenge to Dubai
However, Dubai now has competition from places around it that want to follow the strategy and do it even better.
“The Middle East and GCC are experiencing a significant surge in tourism, with the UAE at the forefront”, co-founder and chief executive officer of Whereisthis Christian Ghammachi said. “Not just Dubai, but Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Ras Al Khaimah, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are investing heavily in tourism products and marketing.”
According to Ghammachi, Dubai will, for a long time, remain at the top of the list of places to visit in the region because of the sheer diversity of products it has to offer and the infrastructure it has built – not to mention the work done by Department of Economy and Tourism in Dubai to keep things exciting and highly diversified.
In contrast, Saudi Arabia is making every effort to raise the bar, and the country’s domestic and inbound tourism will significantly increase over the next few years as more products are added, infrastructure is developed, and people are made aware of the country’s enormous diversity, Ghammachi added.
“We aim to discover and promote the unique characteristics of each country in the region through innovative and creative storytelling,” he said.
“Our secondary goal is also to promote neighboring countries that are easy to reach over the weekend or for a few days, as they are still relatively undiscovered. For example, countries like Georgia, Montenegro, Croatia, Kenya, Tanzania, and also Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and others,” Ghammachi added.
Social media platforms
Whereisthis is a platform that delivers organic, engaging, and informative content to inspire people to discover and explore the region’s increasingly diverse and beautiful gems. The platform’s goal is to provide best-in-class visual and relatable content to its B2B customers and social media followers, which must be organic, emotionally engaging, informative, and relatable.
The platform is geared to grow and leverage a community of content creators from the Middle East and to build trust, and hyper personalised experiences.
“We believe that promoting those destinations can be best achieved by delivering non-scripted, high-quality content, including short vertical reals (snackable content), short hero experience films, etc,” Ghammachi said. “However, our motto is “Snackable can also be gourmet,” which is why even the short fort vertical content we deliver is of the highest visual, creative, and technical standard,”
The most exciting opportunity to increase visitor numbers and spending in the hospitality, tourism, and leisure sectors is provided by high-quality digital content that is produced and distributed effectively, Ghammachi added.
“Whereisthis is expected to open new opportunities for industry development by utilizing the largest and most diverse community of local content producers,” he said.