‘The machine doesn’t stop’: Abu Dhabi’s wartime plan for keeping its cultural ambition alive
But, he adds, “We always understood that, no matter what happens… the machine doesn’t stop.” A pivot to new growth markets Before the conflict, Abu Dhabi was working toward a goal of attracting 39.3 million visitors a year by 2030, up from 24 million in 2023.
Key points
- After the first day of Iranian attacks, he maintains, “business has really been as usual.” Projecting normality, and an alluring vision Informed by its experience during the pandemic, Abu Dhabi kept cultural institutions open throughout the conflict to give residents places to connect and “a sense of comfort,” Al Mubarak says.….
- So he has changed the focus of Abu Dhabi’s marketing, looking to pull in far more visitors from its own region, and from Eastern Europe, India and the rest of Southeast Asia, and Africa.
- Under his worst-case scenarios for the war’s outcome, his plans would focus Abu Dhabi’s culture and tourism strategy much more on its immediate region and the Global South.
Many of those plans are contingent on the US-Israeli conflict with Iran ending, but “if this conflict gets worse, we also have a very clear route,” says the chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi.
Additional details
- So when the time is right for you as a traveler, our doors are wide open.” Three-quarters of Abu Dhabi’s hotel rooms were full again by August, Al Mubarak notes.
- “We’ve kept [at the] front of their mind that the UAE is here and Abu Dhabi is here, and it’s going to continue to develop, it’s going to continue to grow.
- The Signal Interview “We have plan A’s all the way to plan Z’s, from our best-case scenarios to our worst-case scenarios,” Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak says, when asked how the culture, tourism, and property groups he leads are preparing for what might happen next in the conflict that has shaken the Middle East.
- At Aldar Properties, the commercial real estate developer he also chairs, new sales dropped 34% in the first nine months of this year, but at AED 18.9 billion were still higher than for the same period in 2024.
- That grouping of poorer countries comprises more than 70% of the world’s population, he notes, and its people want “to experience a lot more than they have.” Westerners have been more put off by news coverage that he says exaggerates the security threat, but he has not stopped marketing to them, too.
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