Kazakhstan to boost UAE tours in 2016

Delegates at Second Natalie Tours Kazakhstan's executives congress in Dubai.

Amidst its financial crisis, Kazakhstan is planning to boost sales of UAE tours in 2016, said Yuri Sobolev, Head of Natalie Tours Kazakhstan on Tuesday on sidelines of second Natalie Tours Kazakhstan's executives congress in Dubai.
The event consisted of 60 participants, top 50 Kazakhstan's agents, Natalie Tours Kazakhstan's top management, host partner Alpha Destination Management top executives, Dubai Tourism, and was hosted by the hotel Habtoor Grand Beach Resort & Spa Autograph Collection.
The congress included presentations from Dubai Tourism as well as Natalie Tours Kazakhstan's on their strategic plans for the market, the tour operator's efforts towards the UAE, and the results of this year's work.
Adnan Aridi, CEO Alpha Destination Management, said: "We attracted more than 80 thousand Russian tourists during the first 10 month of 2015 and will make big marketing campaign in Russia with the cooperation of DTCM. Russia is one of the biggest markets for Dubai and Alpha Destination Management."
Since Natalie Tours' representative office was first launched in Kazakhstan, around 50,000 tourists from the country have visited UAE. Today, almost 30 per cent of sales of tours to UAE in summer account for the average annual volume. Natalie Tours with Alpha Destination Management offers the largest assortment of hotels and activities in all the Emirates for tourists from Kazakhstan.
The main competitive advantage of Natalie Tour is that resource segment of hotels 5* and 4*+ in which the resource of other operators are limited to the season as a rule.
Khalid Said, hotel manager, Habtoor Grand Beach Resort & Spa said: "Last few years the Russian respresented more than 25 per cent of the hotel guests but after the crises this percentage decreased but should recover soon. We partner with Alpha DM in any Russian event to host all the Russian tour operators and since February this year our hotel became part of the Mariott international family."
At the moment four airlines and 33 flights fly weekly from Kazakhstan to UAE. Natalie Tours offers tours based on each of them, and is also ready to offer the flights of different classes of services with all possible additional services, both onboard and in the cities of arrival.  
"After the marketing campaign between DTCM and Alpha we expect to increase the total Russian tourists with half million tourists. We succeeded to attract the Russian tourists who were supposed to go to Egypt and Turkey and brought them to UAE and Dubai," mentioned Vladimir Vorobiev, president of Natalie Tours.
- sandhya@khaleejtimes.com

Sandhya D'Mello

sandhya@khaleejtimes.com