The newly established Dubai College of Tourism (DCT) has introduced a series of interactive electronic games and educational video-based platforms aimed at furthering the practical knowledge of overseas travel agents as well as Dubai-based tourist-facing individuals about the emirate, general manager Essa Bin Hadher revealed to Hotelier Middle East during an interview at the 2017 Arabian Travel Market (ATM).
“Dubai College of Tourism is a vocational institute offering academic programmes in five different faculties: culinary arts, events, retail, tourism and hospitality. We have certificate and diploma programmes, ranging from one to two years. This is our academic side,” Bin Hadher explained.
He continued: “On the other side, we develop programmes for the tourism industry, depending on industry needs. Our two current programmes just went live.”
One of the programmes is “Dubai Expert”, an electronic card-based gaming series aimed at overseas travel agents abroad and designed to increase overseas travel agents’ knowledge of and familiarity with Dubai. In the game, agents are assigned missions to create travel itineraries for specific clients and their needs and awarded points based on client satisfaction.
“We are departing from the old website base and different literatures to a game where the travel agent can sit and clearly understand what Dubai has to offer without even being here,” Bin Hadher elaborated.
The idea is if the traveller enjoys all the different aspects of the trip in the agenda created, they will come back to Dubai. “
Bin Hadher revealed that a leaderboard will track the standing of participating travel agents around the world, with eventual winners awarded a free trip to Dubai. He said the game is presently being rolled out to global travel agents via Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) and will be available in 12 different languages by the end of 2017.
The second of DCT’s programmes is “Dubai Way”, an interactive video toolkit for Dubai-based tourist-facing individuals, with online activities and assessments serving as a comprehensive, information-packed introduction to Dubai. The programme is online as well as mobile-compatible and can be completed on any device, built with information that a person interacting with a tourist should have as basics.
In explaining the rationale behind “Dubai Way", Bin Hadher said: “Our tourist-facing individuals do not come from the same background; they do not have the same knowledge background. Customer-facing staff sometimes do not really know Dubai and customer service skills vary. We have over 200 different nationalities with different sources of information about Dubai.”
He continued: “We are rolling it out first with hospitality industry, the staff of airlines, hotels, theme parks, malls, but also RTA, the airport, the police, other stakeholders and government entities as well, so everyone operates from the same platform.”
Bin Hadher concluded by adding that the programme would be updated and enhanced every two years.
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