To bring in an element of education and insights-exchange, Dubai Business Events partnered tmf-dialogue to create a conference titled the DBE Leadership Forum. This conference featured top delegates from a European Study Mission, which took place from February 17-20, 2017 in Dubai. The objective of the education sessions during the Forum was to gain insights from the planners themselves, and understand the challenges of their businesses, and the opportunities for enhanced partnerships with the Destination Dubai.

In addition, tmf-dialogue also included some suppliers, like the host DMC as part of the knowledge exchange. This was to ensure the platform would allow for a contextual dialogue of suppliers from Dubai with potential buyers, to better understand what their ambitions from their Business Events and Congresses were.

Commenting on the Leadership Forum, Steen Jakobsen, Director, Dubai Business Events and City Operations, said, “The objective of this forum is to aid knowledge exchange, and to give the delegates in the study mission some food for thought before they went out to experience the destination. We plan our products and services in the MICE industry to best suit planners, but it is important to really hear from them where their challenges lie! And in doing so, seeing how we can continually evolve our offers to ease business for the planners.”

Aaron Janofsky, Associate Director of the Committee on Space Research, a panelists in the Leadership Forum, commented, “The DBE Leadership Forum was well worth the time and a perfect introduction to what Dubai has to offer.  All in all a very good format for learning about the destination in a very short amount of time and for an overview of some of the business opportunities afforded by destination Dubai.”

Appreciating the accurate orientation the Leadership Forum provided at the start of the Study Mission, Steve Gaskin, Founder & Director, The Right Angle Events (a delegate in the Study Mission), commented, “The Study Mission which kick started by a short conference gave us the opportunity to formally meet people from Dubai including the Director of Dubai Tourism. Later there were panel discussions for our benefit. We could safely ask questions about Dubai in this forum. The whole conference sparked a great atmosphere, promise and excitement about the next few days. I am very grateful to tmf-dialogue for putting together this forum which was an excellent spring board to what proved to be a very beneficial trip to the land of Dubai. My company and I are convinced there are excellent opportunities for us, following the visit.”

Commenting from a supplier’s point of view, Abdullah Afridi, Director – Sales and Operations – MICE, Alpha Tours (The DMC that partnered DBE in putting together the itinerary for the study mission), said, “The idea for us is to showcase our capabilities, which we can do in assisting to put the itinerary together. But to truly showcase our versatility and build a genuine contact with the buyer, a format like the Leadership Forum, is really helpful.”

The Dubai Business Event Leadership Forum took place at the start of the Study Mission, and featured two in-depth panel discussions featuring a cross-section of association, corporate and agency representative from the mission. The panel discussions were moderated by Karishma Hundalani, Head- Brand & Content, tmf dialogue marketing (A content curation specialist for the Business Events industry). The Leadership Forum will be the welcome feature in all major Study Missions from across markets in 2017.

Karishma Hundalani

tmf dialogue marketing
Europe, UAE and India
February 27, 2017