In 2012, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum adopted Vision 2020, the goal for Dubai, UAE to reach 20 million visitors annually by the year 2020, and become the global leader in tourism destinations. Still recovering from the economic crisis in 2009, it was an ambitious goal. There were a number of subsequent decrees and mandates in support of this goal, including building out Dubai’s tourism infrastructure, while rebranding the face of Dubai as a globaldestination. It also sought to appeal to businesses looking for a safe, technologically sophisticated location as a gateway to the Middle East. The Dubai Tourism & Commerce Marketing Department (DTCM), in partnership with Emirates Airlines, began a major rebranding and overhaul of all aspects of their digital and print presence, in late 2012, launching in phases until reaching completion in April 2014, available in six languages; Arabic, English, French, German, Mandarin, and Russian.

Challenge

There were several challenges in undertaking re-thinking Dubai’s global presence. Dubai struggled with perception concerns as a meaningful tourism destination vs. a Las Vegas-like experience. Additionally, some neighboring nations, were better established as appealing to travelers interested in historical exploration, so Dubai would need to find an alternative approach to reach their target audience. 

From a technical perspective, there were three key challenges:

1. There were more than 20 separate domains and subdomains, as well as multiple social channels, under DTCM’s umbrella that had been added over time; this left missed opportunities for content sharing, created redundancy in some areas or information gaps in others. 
2. Much of the content and resources to support their ambitious goals as an online destination for drawing millions of international tourists would need to be sourced from third parties or created as part of this effort.
3. The team was comprised of 7 international teams, operating from 5 different countries: Core strategy team in New York, branding team in London, App team in Hamburg, Dev in Sofia, Bulgaria, Social, DTCM IT and stakeholders in Dubai.

Solution

As UX Lead, in partnership with a digital strategist and content strategist, our goal was to identify a way to bring together all the properties a casual visitor, a business seeking to relocate, and conference and events planners might need in a unified, integrated platform, available across multiple devices. 

Provide DTCM with a flexible ecosystem to support not just current needs and information, but also support ongoing growth as Dubai's infrastructure increased. There were three fundamental elements required to provide such a platform:

1. Assess and identify core existing domains, subdomains, and supporting content, and subsequently begin to group them into digestible flexible categories.
2. Look for opportunities to cross-pollinate content, so a visitor might discover that Dubai was a business hub, or a business seeking to open a new office might find the legal information required as well as discover that Dubai provides a wealth of resources for expats, employees and families that choose to relocate.
3. We also sought to provide an experience that started as a visitor might plan a trip and then extend that to an on-the-ground experience.

Process

Such a massive platform restructuring required focusing our attention first on getting to know the audience, getting to know more about Dubai, and then looking into technical feasibility to see if we could bring our ideas to life.

Stakeholder Interviews & User Research

Given the substantial goals of the project, it was critical to spend time with the stakeholders across all properties in Dubai’s digital ecosystem, as well as meet with technical teams to understand what services existed and what might need to be sourced or created. The office of His Excellency facilitated a multi-day conference where we were presented information and conducted interviews. This was critical as part of the discovery.

Beyond stakeholder interests, it was important to gain insights into audiences based on data, and then conduct user interviews around perception and interest. Understanding more about those who might be interested in traveling to Dubai helped inform which areas to focus on.

Sketch, Whiteboard and Iterate

A project of this size requires working with a core team, sketching together, hashing through ideas and really looking for opportunities to provide a meaningful but also a delightful experience. The underlying concept was to create a series of content packets, expressed visually as tiles, and then expanded into varying levels of details as you got deeper into the site.

This approach required that UX and Content Strategy partner closely every step of the way, to ensure a smooth and consistent experience from multiple perspectives. As a larger team it required multiple iterations, a savvy crew, and a great deal of thought and research around the technical challenges.

Partnering & Hand-off to Dev

At project start, Responsive Design was relatively new, and the development team, had never tackled such a massive project as a fully responsive platform. There were multiple meetings, calls and walk-throughs of content strategy and wires, as well as thoroughly documenting requirements and business rules, before we could fully hand off to the Sofia team.

Additionally, the on-the-ground experience as mobile app, would need to leverage the same content packets that the website used and provide a cohesive experience. The New York and Hamburg teams were adjoined closely, and met multiple times in person, to ensure a united ecosystem.

Outcome

The initial rebrand of Dubai began launching, first on social channels in 2013, and progressive builds and launches of the website and app until reaching completion in April 2014. Dubai has continued to support the 2020 initiatives by demonstrating nearly double the global average for tourism growth. By May of 2015 Dubai was up 8.2% vs. the world average of 4.7%. They have also launched multiple campaigns representing Dubai as a family friendly, safe destination for families and businesses alike. Dubai appears to be well on their way to achieving the goal set out by the Sheikh of 20 million visitors by 2020.

Update 2/11/2016 VisitDubai app wins Best M-Government Award at the World Government Summit

Sources: Emirates247

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