SUSTAINABLE TRAVELLER

Dubai International airport to divert 60 per cent of waste from landfills

The programme by Dubai Airports hopes to achieve its target by the middle of next year

Anew waste management initiative will help divert 60 per cent of all waste from Dubai International (DXB) airport away from land lls by the middle of 2023.

As part of the new programme, Dubai Airports has implemented a food waste treatment plan which will capture and compost over 2,000 tonnes of food waste annually from F&B outlets, lounges and hotels across all its terminals and concourses.

Decomposing food waste in land lls results in the emission of methane gas which is 72 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. e new food waste plan was created in partnership with Dubai Airports’ waste management partner Beeah Group. A special high-tech biodigester compost system installed in multiple locations across DXB will increase the speed at which food waste breaks down and becomes reusable compost and clean wastewater. e waste diversion strategy aims to identify economic and environmentally-friendly methods to capture, treat and recycle waste. To date, DXB has managed more than a 40 per cent reduction in waste. A special initiative already captures 100 per cent of all cooking oil used in the airport’s F&B outlets and converts it to biodiesel fuel.

2,000

TONNES

The amount of food waste annually that DXB aims to capture from across its terminals and concourses

100%

Of all cooking oil used in airport’s F&B outlets is already captured and converted to biodiesel fuel WIZZ AIR SIGNS MOU WITH AIRBUS ON HYDROGEN-POWERED AIRCRAFT

Wizz Air has signed an MoU with Airbus to explore the potential for e icient, ultra-low-cost hydrogen-powered aircraft operations. The MoU will identify both operational and infrastructure opportunities and challenges of hydrogen aircraft. Both Wizz Air and Airbus will study the impact of hydrogen models on Wizz Air’s fleet, operations and infrastructure, including its network, scheduling, ground bases and airports, by considering specific aircraft characteristics, such as achievable range and refuelling time.

Wizz claims that it operates at the lowest carbon dioxide emissions per passenger kilometre amongst all competitor airlines.

In November 2021, it signed an agreement with Airbus for the purchase of a further 102 A321 aircraft, comprising 75 A321 neo and 27 Airbus A321XLR aircraft. With the new order, Wizz Air’s delivery backlog comprises a firm order for 34 A320 neo, 240 A321 neo and 47 A321XLR aircraft, plus the additional order for 15 A321 neo and purchase rights for 75 A321 neo aeroplanes.

VFS GLOBAL OUTLINES SUSTAINABILITY PLANS

VFS Global, has published its Integrated Report last month. It covered some of the organisation’s major accomplishments in 2021 across several areas including diversity, equity and inclusion, employee empowerment, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and community empowerment. The report found that 52 per cent of VFS Global’s electricity usage was covered by renewable energy.

More than 1,500 trees were planted in India and the UAE, thereby resulting in a carbon dioxide sequestering of 9.2 tonnes in 2021. Support of the Kolar bio-gas project, which eliminates approximately 4.5 tonnes of firewood usage (per household), also enabled the o setting of 73,429 tonnes of total carbon dioxide emissions last year for VFS’ business-related travel.

Additionally, VFS Global will introduce a Climate Change and Comprehensive School Safety education curriculum for grades 3-10 students across over 45,000 schools in India.

NEW DESALINATION PLANT IN NEOM TO BE COMPLETELY POWERED BY RENEWABLE ENERGY

A new desalination plant powered 100 per cent by renewable energy is set to be built in the Saudi giga project of Neom.

Enowa, the energy, water, and hydrogen subsidiary of Neom, has signed an MoU with Japanese trading company Itochu, and water, waste, and energy management solutions provider Veolia for this project.

The entities will collaborate on the first-of-its-kind selective desalination plant which will be located in Oxagon. The initial phase of the desalination plant is set to open in 2024 and the plant will be fully operational by 2025. It will have a production capacity of 500,000 cubic metres of desalinated water per day by 2025, meeting approximately 30 per cent of Neom’s forecasted total water demand for residential, industrial, and commercial use.

As part of Neom’s circular economy, the new plant will use advanced membrane technology to produce separate brine streams. It will enable Enowa to produce brine-derived products, which will be developed and monetised downstream, according to state-run Saudi Press Agency. Brine, which is usually considered a waste output of desalination, will be treated by Enowa to feed industries utilising high purity industrial salts, bromine, boron, potassium, gypsum, magnesium and rare metal feedstocks.

The brine would therefore be classified as a product, rather than waste, and is expected to therefore minimise the plant’s environmental impact and present a potentially new business model for upcoming desalination facilities around the world.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH “The UAE continues to honour its commitments on climate action. We look forward to hosting the world at COP 28 and accelerating practical progress on climate action through an inclusive, practical and integrated approach”

UAE’s dnata to invest US$100 million in green operations

Dubai-based air and travel services provider, dnata, has said that it would invest US$ 100 million in green operations over the next two years. It said that its ongoing investment in infrastructure, equipment and process improvement will help reduce its carbon footprint by 20 per cent by 2024, and by 50 per cent by 2030.

Dnata has already installed renewable energy features such as solar panels, heat recovery units and electric vehicle charging points at its existing facilities in the UK, Singapore and Ireland. It has also incorporated carbon reduction initiatives in the construction and operation of its recently announced cargo centres in e Netherlands and Iraq.

With regards to its eet planning, dnata says that it has increased investments in electric and hybrid ramp, ground support (GSE) and forkli equipment, and refurbished existing GSE with new technologies to decrease emissions. It added that it has therefore become the rst ground handler to successfully complete green aircra turnarounds using only zero-emission GSE in the US and UAE.

Dnata noted that its catering team is working closely with its airline customers to analyse consumption trends and use predictive data to optimise the loading of F&B for in ight catering. Analysis of on-board data not only reduces food waste, but also fuel burn associated with carrying excess weight. Earlier this year, it committed to reducing its waste to land lls by 20 per cent by 2024.

A breakdown of some of dnata’s key metrics for the financial year 2021-2022 527,000

Number of aircraft turns handled

3 million

Tonnes of cargo managed 39.9 million

The number of meals uplifted

Grit. Gumption. Tenacity. It’s somewhere between these three traits that Dubai found the means to push itself out early from the initial Covid-19induced lockdowns and adjust to a new normal. It became one of the world’s first major global cities to reopen to international tourists in the second half of 2020. While other destinations were still fumbling for solutions, Dubai acted.

A coordinated response from various stakeholders, not least homegrown carrier Emirates, the city’s leadership, and a web of private sector entities jumpstarted the city’s tourism industry. “Today, we’re not just the Department of Tourism as we were in the past. We are the Department of Economy and Tourism. So there’s a much bigger role we can play today, more so than we did in the past,” says Issam Kazim, CEO of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing at Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism (DET).

Scripting a tourism turnaround strategy amidst an unprecedented global crisis isn’t something for which there is a playbook. But if ever there was one, Kazim would quite likely have written it. “We’ve been spearheading a lot of change that’s happening in the industry. We have a proven track record of moving up the ranking to reach number four on a global scale when it comes to the most visited city in the world, with an aspiration of becoming number one. For us, it’s about evolving, making sure that we’re adapting as well as listening to our market. It’s one thing about being aware of what the competition is doing, but it’s actually more important for us to see how the needs of our visitors and partners are being addressed,” says Kazim.

Tourism is, after all, the backbone of Dubai’s diversified economy. It contributed 11.5 per cent to the emirate’s GDP in 2019, the year before the pandemic. By 2021, Dubai had climbed out of the abyss as far as its tourism market was concerned. It recorded 7.28 million international overnight visitors between January and December 2021, a 32 per cent year-on-year growth.

Last year, the leading source market for the city’s international visitor arrivals was India with 910,000 visitors, followed by 491,000 travellers from Saudi Arabia, 444,000 visitors from Russia and 420,000 arrivals from the UK. As Kazim explains, the pandemic meant that the city’s tourism department began to focus on a wider target audience beyond its traditional source markets. “We started to focus on markets where we saw potential. So France, Italy, Netherlands and Egypt grew quite a bit, giving us a very solid starting point with these newer markets.”

The strategy to cast a wider net paid off. According to the data released by the DET, in the first quarter of this year, from January-March, Dubai recorded 3.97 million international overnight visitors. Of this, the MENA and GCC contributed 35 per cent of the total volumes of international overnight visitors, while Western Europe accounted for 24 per cent of its arrivals, and South Asia was responsible for 14 per cent. The bar that Kazim sets for his team is What we want to go back to is our 2019 to reach even higher. “What we want to figures, so 16.73 go back to is our 2019 figures, so 16.73 million overnight million overnight visitors, and build from visitors, and build there. [Nearly] four million visitors [in the from there first quarter] is something we’re very proud of. Of course, even with the four million, we still have other [source] markets that need to pick up – India hadn’t fully opened up during that period and neither had Saudi Arabia – our top two markets. China too still hasn’t come back,” notes Kazim.

The stage is set for Dubai to race past its pre-pandemic figures. From January-May this year, Dubai received 6.17 million international overnight visitors, a 197 per cent year-on-year increase over the corresponding period in 2021. Indicating a surge of interest in Dubai, the DET noted that in May 2022, searches and bookings for the emirate reached almost pre-pandemic levels.

Sustainable growth

A dominant event that drove visits to Dubai over Q4 2021 and Q1 2022 was the six-month long Expo 2020 Dubai which concluded on March 31 – but not before recording over 24.1 million visits. “Hats o With the private sector, we have to the leadership for being able to not just pull o an event, but to pull it o in such a di cult time globally. And now, it’s about regular sessions [maintaining] the momentum that was built and inform them up. We’ve launched new visa programmes about our plans including golden visas, retirement visas, and and strategies freelance visas. It was based on hearing from people what are the gaps, the needs, and the opportunities and rolling it out for them to bring in more people to Dubai, not just to visit but to maybe even relocate, and for them to then hire all the best talent from around the world to come and live in Dubai as well.” Kazim is categorical that making sure Dubai attracts the number of visitors it can, isn’t the sole responsibility of the government alone – the private sector necessarily plays an important role. He says that the public-private partnership that exists in Dubai is vital to the city’s tourism success. “With the private sector, we have regular sessions with them and inform them about our plans and strategies, as well as from which markets we see growth potential and opportunities. We work with them on a group level and then even on an individual bespoke level, understanding what their segments of interests are and trying to make sure that even our campaigns are aligned with their o ers. ere isn’t a one size ts all [solution],” observes Kazim. ere are factors exerting a negative in uence on the city’s tourism sector – factors beyond its control. ese range from the Russian-Ukrainian crisis playing out in East Europe, a soaring global in ationary rate that is putting pressure on disposable incomes of households, and a rise in oil prices that is pushing up airfares across most major

carriers. But rather than focusing on these, Kazim says that Dubai’s tourism strategy doubles down on those aspects that it can control, namely adding value to the travel experience. “Since 2013, when we launched our [tourism] strategy, we knew that we’re in an industry where there are so many socio-economic and geopolitical factors that are outside of our control and which dictate when and where people travel. At the same time, the [destination’s] value aspect comes into question. We want to make sure that when people come to Dubai, they really see the value of the experiences that they’re having. They understand that if they’re paying for something, they’re getting that in return as well from the experience, the service, and everything else.”

The growth of tourism within Dubai is backed solidly by its hotels, airlines and restaurants, all of which have risen with the tide of Dubai’s growing tourism sector.

Dubai ranked first globally in hotel occupancy in Q1 2022 at 82 per cent, which was just shy of the 84 per cent that the city’s hotels recorded over the same period in 2019. For comparison, according to analytics firm STR, hotel occupancy in other major destinations in the first quarter of this year stood at 56 per cent in London, 55.3 per cent in New York and 51.2 per cent in Paris.

Three key metrics regarding Dubai’s hotel performance in the first quarter of 2022 already surpassed the corresponding period in 2019. The average daily rate at Dubai hotels in Q1 2022 reached Dhs649 (compared to Dhs498), while the average length of stay was 4.3 nights (vs 3.5 nights) and occupied room nights stood at 10.22 million (vs 8.63 million). Also, in the first quarter of this year, there were a total of 769 hotel establishments and 140,192 rooms, compared to

HOTEL STATS FOR DUBAI IN Q1 2022:

82%

Hotel occupancy levels

Dhs649

Average daily rate

769

Total number of hotels

140,192

Number of rooms available

DUBAI TOURISM 716 hotel establishments that were open with 117,434 rooms in Q1 2019.

Dubai-based carrier Emirates meanwhile has moved swiftly to support the growth over the last few months and resumed flights to nearly 80 per cent of its pre pandemic destination network. It has also signed MoUs directly with a number of tourism boards including Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Africa and Maldives, among others, to boost visitor traffic in both directions across those destinations.

Apart from the hotels and airlines, the city’s restaurants have also stepped up to the plate. A city with over 12,000 restaurants and cafés, Dubai was chosen as the first destination in the Middle East for the coveted Michelin Guide which debuted in June. The city’s rich culinary scene, says Kazim, can be a major contributor to the city’s tourism growth going forward. “I think gastronomy is one of those key pillars that we’ve been talking about for quite some time. It was a main proposition that we had discussed when we launched our strategy in 2013. This came off the back of a lot of people talking about the amazing food scene that exists here.

“We have people of 200 nationalities in Dubai and that comes across in the food and the service culture too. The Michelin Guide is something we’re very proud of.”

The path ahead

The way that Kazim and his team are making certain that the growth of the emirate’s tourism is sustainable, is by ensuring a high percentage of returning visitors – at the moment, 25 per cent of visitors to Dubai are those who have been here before. “Repeat visitations are important because that creates growth. With the new visa

programmes, we’re making sure more and more businesses are moving here and that families are moving here.

“These people who move to Dubai can attract meetings and events in to the destination. Plus, they play a big role in the VFR – visiting friends and relatives – category as well. That in itself creates a loop that will enable us to grow the destination,” says Kazim.

At the government level, there have been some major changes over the last few months, that have spurred tourism in Dubai. For example, in November last year, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, merged two of the emirate’s key departments, Dubai Economy and Dubai Tourism, under a single entity called Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism. One of the major goals at the time of the decision was to aim to increase the number of tourists coming to Dubai by 40 per cent to 25 million visitors by 2025.

Also, in February this year, the second edition of the World’s Coolest Winter campaign in the UAE concluded. That 45day campaign which began on December 15, 2021, was aimed at mobilising the resident population of the UAE to spur domestic tourism. According to state news agency WAM, the campaign raised the revenues of hotel establishments to Dhs1.5bn, compared to Dhs1bn in its first edition. The campaign increased the number of domestic tourists from 950,000 to 1.3 million between the first and second editions, while the occupancy rate of hotel establishments over the same period rose from 66 per cent to 73 per cent. At a national level, the total contribution of the travel and tourism sector to the UAE’s GDP is forecasted to reach Dhs264.5 billion, or 12.4 per cent of the national GDP, by 2027.

As far as future-oriented initiatives are concerned, and at a local level, Dubai is ensuring that digital transformation is very much on the agenda. At the World Government Summit 2022, Dubai Municipality said that it would work with private sector companies and investors to launch a futuristic city in the metaverse. “I think the metaverse is something that everyone’s excited about. Is it going to become the next big thing or is it going to be a fad that’s going to go away? We never know, but we cannot leave it to chance. We want to make sure that we are involved in that space, and start introducing Dubai to people who have never experienced it before. [The metaverse] gives us that window of opportunity to see what chances and opportunities can be created from this new platform. We want to make sure that we’re riding the wave with everybody else,” says Kazim.

And for the moment, Dubai’s tourism sector is effortlessly surfing the crest of a very big wave.

Gastronomy is one of those key pillars that we had discussed when we launched our strategy in 2013 6.17 million

The number of international overnight visitors to Dubai from January-May 2022

Dhs264.5 billion

The expected contribution of the travel and tourism sector to UAE’s GDP by 2027