It’s official: Dubai is world’s most popular tourist destination

Emirate ranks above global cities like London, Rome and Paris to clinch the top spot.

Dubai has been declared as the world’s most popular destination for 2022. This came as Tripadvisor released its Travellers’ Choice Awards for 2022: The Best of the Best Destinations.

The Emirate has been ranked ahead of global cities like London, Rome and Paris to clinch the top spot.

The awards honour travellers’ favourite destinations, hotels, restaurants, things to do, and beyond, based on the reviews and opinions collected over a 12-month period.

Describing the city, the travel platform writes: “Dubai is a destination that mixes modern culture with history, adventure with world-class shopping and entertainment. Catch a show at the Dubai Opera, see Downtown from atop the Burj Khalifa and spend an afternoon along Dubai Creek exploring the gold, textile and spice souks.

“If you’re looking for thrills, you can float above the desert dunes in a hot air balloon, climb aboard a high-speed ride at IMG Worlds of Adventure or skydive over the Palm Jumeirah.”

Dubai was among the first cities in the world to reopen to tourists after closing its borders to shut out Covid-19.

Winter is one of the best times to visit the city and an ongoing local campaign, Dubai Destinations, highlights the Emirate’s outdoor recreational and adventure activities.

In an interview with Khaleej Times, Issam Kazim, Chief Executive Officer, Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), had highlighted how Dubai has reinforced its status as one of the world’s safest and fastest growing tourism destinations.

“Our proactive approach in successfully managing the pandemic allowed us to reopen the city to domestic tourists in May 2020 and international tourists in July 2020. Since then we have achieved steady growth and great momentum in the travel sector, with our latest data revealing that between January and October 2021, Dubai welcomed around 4.88 million international visitors, with international visitation in Dubai in October alone reaching over one million.

“When reviewing figures against pre-pandemic levels, hotel room inventory is now 6 per cent higher than 2019, showing how Dubai continues to lead the global tourism rebound and stimulate international business growth.”

Source: Khaleej Times

Why corporate travel is betting on NDC

Q&A with Lydie Charpin, vice president, customer solutions, corporations, Amadeus

The concept of New distribution capability (NDC) was introduced eight years ago yet development and implementation has been slow. Amadeus’ Lydie Charpin explains why 2022 could see significant steps forward and why IATA changed the way it measures progress.

BTN Europe: How would you describe industry progress on NDC to date? Many would say it’s been a slow journey so far.
Lydie Charpin: It’s been eight years since IATA outlined a vision for the distribution ecosystem. Yes, it does feel like the industry has taken quite some time to put the NDC groundwork in place and, for some time, it appeared that the NDC vision would prove difficult to turn into reality due to the complexity of standardisation and commercial considerations impacting so many different actors. But significant progress has been made in the past years with an increasing number of actors in the whole distribution chain having started their NDC journey.

BTNE: How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected progress?
LC: Despite Covid-19, I’m optimistic that 2022 will be seen as a pivotal year for NDC. We are currently working with more than 30 airlines on the IT side and 17 more to distribute their NDC content through the Amadeus Travel Platform, including IAG, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Etihad. Meanwhile, more than 3,500 travel agencies across 57 markets can book this NDC content through our solutions. Our goal is to make NDC-sourced content available to all Amadeus travel sellers globally in the coming months.

BTNE: Explain why the need for NDC is now particularly pressing?
LC: Modern consumers have the same expectations of travel companies as they do of brands such as Amazon, Netflix and Spotify. As an industry, we must improve how we deliver products across all channels and be more responsive to today’s digital consumers. NDC offers new possibilities for the retailing of travel services that better meet these needs. The potential for NDC – together with IATA’s ONE Order initiative – to help airlines and travel companies conceive, retail and deliver end-to-end services more efficiently is an exciting prospect. The future promises a greatly improved traveller experience for the creation of additional value, driven by further industry-wide collaboration. In September, we published a report on NDC containing insights from airlines, corporations and travel sellers. This was designed to shed light on where we are today as an industry in terms of NDC readiness, the barriers that still exist to reach full industrialisation, and show what can be done to accelerate the journey to modern retailing.

BTNE: Why did IATA recently change the way it was measuring progress on NDC implementation?
LC: IATA recently updated the way it measures progress in the adoption of the NDC and ONE Order standards under the Airline Retailing Maturity index (ARMi), for which Amadeus recently was registered both as an airline and travel seller provider. ARMi is the first official industry index that measures the progress in air travel retailing and is structured around three key pillars: capabilities verification, partnership deployment, and a value capture compass.

Ultimately, as an industry, we need to strive towards richer, more tailored, and more relevant travel offers to speed up recovery. We have so far seen some initial successes selling ancillaries and bundles through NDC, but the ability to sell more personalised offers remains mostly untapped. We see this index as a positive development that can accelerate the transition towards this goal.

Amadeus is committed to innovation, cutting edge technology and leadership on NDC and retailing, and being dually registered in the index is another proof point that we are headed in the right direction. We sit at the centre of the travel industry and continue to drive collaboration among all industry players.

Transitioning from the classic and transaction-oriented way of working to a retail-oriented, next-generation environment based on NDC and ONE Order is a sophisticated process that will require a change in mindset and way of working from both airlines and travel sellers. Working together, we can rebuild travel to be bigger and better than ever before and to deliver more value across the whole industry.

BTNE: How is NDC enhancing personalisation?
LC: Corporations can work more closely with airlines to design bespoke offers that cater to their employees – such as special packages for senior managers. This would mean employees don’t have to book and expense such services separately. For example, we spoke to Neil Geurin, managing director of digital customer experience and distribution strategy at American Airlines, who believes NDC delivers what travellers want, more simply. In the aforementioned report, he said: “We know corporate travellers tend to need wifi, and that pretty much every company is happy to fund it. The corporation also likely wins if its senior managers have speedy boarding and a premium cabin seat so they can be more productive. With NDC our corporate customers will be able to work with us to help define their experience with American.”

In practice, NDC makes it easier to provide additional information to corporate travellers: telling them how many frequent flyer points they would earn by booking certain flights, for instance. Such a message can be a powerful driver to comply with travel policy and could mean the corporation unlocks perks like free WiFi or lounge access. Furthermore, personalisation could extend to offering tall passengers a seat with extra legroom or special meals to those who need them. Such tailored offers can be based on travellers’ preferences, historical and real-time data, or the context.

What’s more, this kind of content can be integrated in the same search and booking flow as before via desktop or mobile. This means travellers can conveniently find NDC content, alongside non-NDC content, view and book seats and ancillaries while maintaining the same approval flow.

TMCs, meanwhile, need to help corporations meet their duty of care towards employees, now more than ever, and are experimenting with NDC to access timely data that transfers from booking systems into downstream systems so they can locate every traveller at any moment.

BTNE: How is NDC going to really get off the ground?
LC: While early adopters have seen some initial success with NDC, real acceleration will only happen once we collectively broaden the appeal of NDC. And to do this, collaboration and experimentation are fundamental. Only with mass adoption will we be able to accurately address performance, scalability, and capability requirements. What’s certain is the future of business travel will require greater flexibility, agility and innovation – NDC is forming a core part of this journey as business travel recovers.

Source: BTN Europe

Airlines Warn 5G Could Majorly Disrupt Air Travel

The airline industry is raising the stakes in a showdown with AT&T and Verizon over plans to launch new 5G wireless service this week, warning that thousands of flights could be grounded or delayed if the rollout takes place near major airports.

CEOs of the nation’s largest airlines say that interference from the wireless service on a key instrument on planes is worse than they originally thought.

“To be blunt, the nation’s commerce will grind to a halt” unless the service is blocked near major airports, the CEOs said in a letter Monday, January 17, to federal officials including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has previously taken the airlines’ side in the matter.

AT&T and Verizon plan to activate their new 5G wireless service Wednesday, January 19, after two previous delays from the original plan for an early December rollout.

The new high-speed 5G service uses a segment of the radio spectrum that is close to that used by altimeters, which are devices that measure the height of aircraft above the ground.

Two weeks ago, the companies struck a deal with the Federal Aviation Administration to delay the service for two more weeks and reduce the power of 5G transmitters near airports. That delay ends Wednesday, January 19.

AT&T and Verizon say their equipment will not interfere with aircraft electronics and that the technology is being safely used in many other countries. Critics of the airline industry say the carriers had several years to upgrade altimeters that might be subject to interference from 5G.

The CEOs of 10 passenger and cargo airlines, including American, Delta, United, and Southwest, said 5G will be more disruptive than they originally thought because dozens of large airports that were to have buffer zones to prevent 5G interference with aircraft will still be subject to flight restrictions announced last week by the FAA and because those restrictions won’t be limited to times when visibility is poor.

“Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded. This means that on a day like yesterday, more than 1,100 flights and 100,000 passengers would be subjected to cancellations, diversions or delays,” the CEOs said.

Source: AFAR

Britain to Drop COVID-19 Restrictions

Britain is ending COVID-19 restrictions, including mask mandates, working from home and vaccine passports, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Wednesday.

The measures had been introduced to slow the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant of the virus.

“Many nations across Europe have endured further winter lockdowns … but this government took a different path,” Johnson told lawmakers, citing a decreasing number of people being admitted to intensive care because of the virus.

“Our scientists believe it is likely that the omicron wave has now peaked nationally … because of the extraordinary booster campaign,” Johnson said, adding that restrictions also had slowed the spread.

Some scientists disagree with the move.

“Removing (the) measures in the face of extremely high levels of infection is a risk,” University of Warwick virologist Lawrence Young said.

“Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait for another couple of weeks before removing the advice to work from home and the face coverings mandate. There’s no guarantee that infection levels will continue to fall.”

Britain has seen 152,513 deaths since the virus emerged from China in early 2020.

Johnson is currently facing a political crisis, including criticism from his own party, for hosting parties during the peak of lockdowns in the country.

Some say the easing of restrictions is an attempt by Johnson to shore up support among conservatives who disagreed with them.

Johnson said despite the moves, “We must all remain cautious during these last weeks of winter,” adding that hospitals still could see increased cases.

“The pandemic is not over,” he cautioned.

Source: VOA

Immigration department extends e-passport deadline to November

The Immigration Department has silently extended the December 31, 2021 deadline for the phasing out of the old generation passport.

The Interior Ministry on February 4, 2021, extended the deadline to December 31, citing the Covid-19 pandemic that forced the Immigration department to scale down its operations.

In its statement announcing the extension of the process to phase out the old passport, the ministry said the extension would be the last and advised Kenyans to acquire the electronic passport to avoid travelling inconveniences.

The Interior Ministry said starting January 1 this year, the old dark blue passport would be null and void, and no Kenyan would be able to travel internationally without a valid EAC biometric e-passport.

However, responding to queries on the status of the old passports, Immigration Director-General Alexander Muteshi indicated the old passports will continue being in use.

“EAC changed the deadline for all EAC countries to November 2022,” Muteshi said in a message.

Kenya is rolling out the e-passport as part of the binding commitment by the EAC to move to the new biometric e-passport.

The decision to have the e-passport was arrived at during the 17th Ordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of State.

The issuance of the e-passport was to start by January 1, 2017, to phase out the current machine-readable East African and national passports from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2018.

When this failed — due to lack of preparedness — the 35th EAC Council of Ministers directed member states to start issuance of the e-passport by January 31, 2018.

According to the East African Community, the new passport is expected to boost the free movement of people across the region and it will be in line with the implementation of the Common Market Protocol, which guarantees the right to move freely between EAC member countries.

Article 9 of the protocol on travel documents provides that, “A citizen of a partner state who wishes to travel to another Partner State shall use a valid common standard travel document; 2. The partner states which have agreed to use machine‐readable and electronic national identity cards as travel documents may do so”.

The partner states that have agreed to use machine‐readable and electronic national identity cards shall work out modalities for the implementation of the aforementioned provision two.

Source: The Star

Kenyan tourism begins recovery from pandemic slump as locals fuel travel

(Reuters) – Kenya’s tourism industry has started to pull out of its deep COVID-19-induced slump as local travellers take advantage of lower prices, the government said on Wednesday, but foreign visitor numbers are still well below pre-pandemic levels.

The East African nation expects the sector, typically one of its top sources of foreign exchange, to earn 173 billion shillings ($1.5 billion) this year, up 18.5% from last year, the government said.

“The recovery seems to have begun,” George Gitonga, the acting chief executive of the state-run Tourism Research Institute, told Reuters after the figures were released.

Earnings slumped to 88.6 billion shillings in 2020, officials said, as governments around the world restricted the movement of people, including through the closure of air spaces, to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

They bounced back to 146 billion shillings last year, with the number of hotel nights occupied by Kenyan travellers doubling during the period, said Najib Balala, the tourism minister.

Local resorts, which normally concentrate their marketing efforts on foreign tourists, were forced to turn to the domestic market by the pandemic, offering cut rates to entice holidaymakers.

Foreign visitor numbers were still sharply lower than pre-pandemic levels, at just under 870,500 last year against 2 million in 2019. They are forecast to reach 1.03 million this year.

The drop in earnings in the sector from foreign tourists has contributed to a sharp drop in the local currency , which is trading at all-time lows against the dollar.

This year’s forecast for the sector’s performance depends on the continuation of the global campaign to vaccinate people against COVID-19, and sustained marketing into traditional source markets like Britain, and new ones in Asia, Gitonga said.

From safaris in the Maasai Mara and other wildlife reserves to holidays on Indian Ocean beaches, Kenya’s tourism industry contributes about 10% of economic output and employs over 2 million people.

The sector shed nearly 1.2 million jobs after the onset of the pandemic, the tourism ministry said, but it has started to claw back some of those losses on the back of the tentative recovery.

“Most of the jobs have come back from October 2021,” Balala said.

Source: Reuters