Dubai’s home-grown annual events of Dubai Shopping Festival and Dubai Summer Surprises are now a well-known international brand icons. This observation comes from the impressive DSF stall that fascinated WTM visitors who showed a flurry of interest in its forthcoming special 45 days long combined edition of DSF 2006-2007 scheduled for its action-packed run from December 20 to February 2, 2007.

The world’s obsession for the decade old annual shopping extravaganza and the nine year old summer event was all too clear for the DSF delegation including Khulood Al Thani, DSF Marketing Manager, Ahmed Ali, Operations Coordinator and Maitha Gobash, Senior Communication Projects Coordinator. The attending team received enquiries about the festivals in particular and Dubai in general. Mostly people came asking about the dates of the forthcoming DSF and its various attractions including shopping (bargains, sales), winning (raffles) and entertainment (carnivals and musical shows) for the latest edition dubbed as A World of Festivals. According to the team, many visitors confirmed that they knew the DSF/DSS very well as they had also come calling during the various editions of DSF/DSS and many have watched it on TV or had known someone who has earlier visited the festivals.

Said Laila Suhail, DSF Chief Marketing Officer, "The European market is very important for us and this is the fourth time the DSF is participating in WTM as part of our promotional campaign held in Germany, Russia, the GCC countries, the Sub-continent and now WTM as a large number of delegates from the global travel trade attend the event giving us an excellent opportunity to showcase our products to the international audience," she said.

The United Kingdom is one of the most important tourist markets for Dubai as the number of hotel guests coming in from UK last year was 562,299 guests compared to 458,451 in 2003, an increase of 32%.The number of Britons who used the Dubai International Airport last year was 2,314,338 passengers, an increase of more than 23% from the previous year and the number of companies that promote tourism to Dubai in the British market rose to 158 companies, an increase of about 40% from 2003.

The World Travel Market 2006, which ran from November 6 to 9 in London, was witness to this splendid obsession with DSF and DSS. The event saw a large Dubai presence with a DSF delegation and stall very much the centre of attraction for visitors from all over the world. Led by Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), the Dubai delegation had 95 exhibitors occupying 500 sq mts at this 27th edition of WTM.

For the DSF delegation, the team was very happy with the response and the outcome of the participation at this major world travel event which concluded in London on Thursday. A lot of magazines and website hosts were also very keen to do features on DSF and to highlight its various activities as the team distributed promotional material to the visitors and deciphered their queries about DSF and DSS.