Dubai World Trade Centre yesterday unveiled its ambitious designs for its new Exhibition Destination at a preview for leading industry figures from the Middle East’s events and exhibitions sector.
The name of the new Centre – which has been a source of significant industry and media speculation throughout 2006 – was also revealed for the first time: Dubai Exhibition World.
Extensive plans for the world-class dedicated exhibition facility were revealed a day after the highly successful GITEX 2006 exhibition ended in Dubai – setting records which made it comfortably the largest exhibition in the region in terms of visitor and exhibitor numbers.
Dubai Exhibition World, based in Exhibition City, will be one of the largest facilities of its kind in the world and is specifically designed to enable events like GITEX, Big 5, Index, Gulfood and Arab Health to continue their meteoric growth, in addition to attracting some of the world’s biggest and best new exhibitions to the region.
“Dubai Exhibition World will be a one-of-a-kind destination, designed to showcase the world’s most prestigious exhibitions and provide visitors and exhibitors with every possible facility,” said Helal Saeed Al Marri, Director General, Dubai World Trade Centre.
“It was important to us that our partners – who have been instrumental in establishing Dubai’s reputation as the regional epicentre of conferences and exhibitions – should be among the first to see the plans for development so that we could gather their input on how we can move forward together to make Dubai one of the top cities in the world for events,” he added.
Reaction to the unveiling of the plans from senior representatives of the GCC’s largest events and congress companies was extremely positive, with a number of organisations pledging their enthusiastic support for the facility and discussing their intentions to use the venue when it is opened in 2009.
Christopher Hudson, Chief Operations Officer, Messe Frankfurt Middle East, said: “This is a visionary development that will position Dubai to rival Frankfurt and Shanghai as an events destination, providing an unmatched business opportunity and offering state-of-the-art facilities for organisers, as well as endorsing the UAE as a global venue for conferences and exhibitions.”
“Through the development of this facility, Dubai will continue to attract major exhibitions to the region, and Messe Frankfurt certainly sees significant potential for expanding our portfolio of shows and bringing international conferences to Dubai Exhibition World,” he added.
Others in the industry agreed.
“Dubai Exhibition World has exceeded our expectations, providing a very dynamic, even revolutionary destination for the global events industry. Every detail has been thought out to maximise the benefits for visitors and exhibitors,” said Chris Chackal, Group Exhibition Director – Overseas Events, Reed Travel Exhibitions.
“Reed Travel Exhibitions is always looking for new opportunities to increase our reach, and this project provides the kind of world-class venue and facilities that add real value to international offerings like ours,” he added.
Full details of the new facilities will be revealed to an international audience at the EIBTM trade exhibition in Barcelona, Spain next week, supported by a local public and industry awareness campaign across the GCC.
Dubai Exhibition World is being built to cater for the Dh12 billion a year exhibitions and conference industry in the UAE which is currently experiencing ongoing growth of 15 percent a year.
