How Abu Dhabi is Boosting Tourism with Social Media

Dubai, an energetic, cyclically growing city known as the "City of Gold,” is recognized for its iconic skyscrapers and lavish lifestyle, but it is also a growing hub of digital marketing.

The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi works to regulate, support, develop and market Abu Dhabi's tourism industry through activities aimed at promoting and preserving the heritage and culture of the emirate.

The challenge

Abu Dhabi is a renowned conurbation that mergers a rich cultural history with a stunning, modern urban landscape. Abu Dhabi's Partition of Philosophy and Travel is tasked with developing and endorsing the whole emirate, with the overarching neutral of helping Abu Dhabi develop into a world-class, idiosyncratic destination.

Building type awareness and engagement was a highest priority, so the department knew it needed to focus on developing a comprehensive social media strategy. But with an inland squad business multiple agencies obliquely diverse regions, that strategy needs to be erected around simple, ascendable procedures and workflows.

DCT selected Dubaies Enterprise to streamline and centralize content approval, create an oversight moderation process, manage social media campaigns, and design reporting to prove the impact of social media on the department's broader objectives.

Social media advertising is vivacious in building associations between businesses and their Middle Eastern goal market. As we drive on, let’s discourse about the eccentric social media marketing drifts affecting Dubai’s digital industry.

Social media has expanded more admiration than any of us could have imaginary an epoch ago. It started as a platform that helped friends connect with each other, but has now become the essence of our lifestyle. There is integration with social media platforms like games, work recruitment and most importantly advertising. The things we post, the images we display are all part of the personality we show to the world. We may try to deny it as much as we want, but our personality on social media has effectively become our identity.

Why Social Media?

One question that comes to mind is why do people like to use social media for travel? This can be explained by the fact that websites like TripAdvisor and Wayn have a global reach to tourists, with innovative applications to manage information and add value through creating a great interactive environment. Through this you can do things like getting travel information, doing transactions, building new relationships with people sitting far away. This all translates into ease of use, which is a big draw for people. It has a significant impact in Dubai and UAE.

As we have established that word of mouth is the most important factor when considering tourism, it is now important to know how social media has commercialized word of mouth. Hundreds of thousands of members comment on travel destinations and other related topics on websites such as TripAdvisor, Facebook and online forums. These are considered reliable resources for potential travelers. Influencing and using these websites can be a step towards building a better social media influence.

Social Media’s Impact on Dubai’s marketing

Dubai, a city notorious for its wealth and inventiveness, has gradually understood the efficiency of social media marketing. The enlargement of social media in Dubai has altered the marketing industry and provided frontline methods for businesses to connect with larger audiences, growth awareness of their brands and outperform competitors.

The Rising Use of Social Media in Dubai

Dubai, recognized for its pluralistic atmosphere, uses social media widely, which is unbelievable. Things happening to take off when websites like Friendster and My Space reached saturation in the early 2000s. However, the real revolution began with the development of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Using Social Listening to Shape Campaigns

To grasp additional people on social media, DCT had to brand assured it was deliberating the most significant topics and linking the right conversations. Using the social listening integration within Dubaies, DCT can find and follow conversations about Abu Dhabi on social media to understand the type of content audiences see on each channel.

By displaying Brandwatch mention results in a stream within the Dubaies dashboard, DCTs can engage directly with content in real-time. Rivulet content can be drinkable by numerous Brandwatch filters to enhance the most relevant results for a specific campaign or creativity. For pattern, the DCT agency accountable for the Louvre Abu Dhabi can now use a stream to filter results connected to the museum.

Understanding Analytics to Iterate and Improve

Investigating social data helps DCT increase a more nuanced understanding of its spectators on social media. Using Dubaies Analytics and Brandwatch Vizia – a combined advertising commentary and command center solution – allowable the squad to track "non-owned” discourses about Abu Dhabi travel and tourist attractions, as well as competing destinations. By deed this, DCT was talented to identify negative discussions about Abu Dhabi and use the visions to inform its social strategy for that particular market. This data is displayed in customizable dashboards that the team monitors in real-time. Using these consoles, the squad analyses the achievement of social campaigns and makes alterations to enhance performance. The results are communicated to other teams and senior government stakeholders as evidence of social media success.

Utilizing the Resource

Using social media boards to advertise and spread travel information about Dubai is a bit different from the traditional way of advertising. The unique thing about social media is that you are not just dealing with the platform itself but also with the people who are actually using it. The most important thing is to have the right strategy when promoting tourism interests; it is not always about the budget. Being goal-oriented, innovative and smart will give you an edge over other competitors. That means it is important to be different so that you can be seen in the increasing traffic of social media. The interesting thing about travel is that you cannot sample the product (travel) unless you pay for it. This therefore makes the power of impressions, word of mouth and referrals even more important than in other industries, especially when dealing with tourism in Dubai.

Targeting the right audience for your brand is essential. Mostly, travelers to the UAE and Dubai will be from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Identifying the target demographic for your brand will help a lot in getting more tourists, if you target Northern Europe audience regarding tourism in UAE and Dubai, it will not have as much impact as the above regions. Another important factor to keep in mind when you plan to use social media to influence travel is to understand why people want to visit Dubai or the UAE. According to recent surveys, the two major points of interest identified for travel to the UAE are cultural attractions and pleasure-seeking. If you take advantage of these two factors you are liable to get more responses than if you were marketing using other factors.

The Online Impression

As mentioned above, a social media personality is now effectively who we are, the same can be said for travel destinations. The information you have on the Internet determines what people will think of you. That's why it's extremely important to have a dedicated online presence that promotes your interests and creates an impression that best suits potential tourists.

Having the right online presence is generally a deciding marketing factor for Dubai or Abu Dhabi. For example, when someone says Las Vegas, the first thing that comes to your mind is, "nightlife." Thus, it is essential to give the right first impression to the travelers, this can be generated by the right social media presence. This could increase user ratings and create a larger and concentrated travel base to Dubai or the UAE.

In conclusion, social media is a growing monster of impressions that is slowly swallowing the travel industry, and for the UAE and Dubai to get the best out of it they need to move forward first and make the right impression, and the right things. They will potentially have to be brought to market tourist.