Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (Adnec) recorded a 56 per cent jump in the number of shows its hosted last year.
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The news comes as the capital seeks to grab a bigger share of the US$300 billion (Dh1.1 billion) global events industry.
The Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company said the exhibition centre brought Dh2.38bn into the economy in 2010, and it expected last year's figure to be higher.
"Things are in a positive place," said Owen Mills, the group exhibitions marketing director at IIR Middle East, which organises events including Cityscape Abu Dhabi at the exhibition centre.
"The Government are also a lot more open to supporting events, so there's budgets available to help organisers in terms of things like hosted buyer programmes. So the Government is actually helping organisers attract people to the shows because Abu Dhabi has always been seen as a more difficult place to get visitors to than Dubai," he said. "Abu Dhabi has more hotels now, it has more things to do than maybe two or three years ago. I wouldn't say it's strictly competition in full to Dubai yet, but I don't think it's really [Abu Dhabi's] goal anyway. I think they want to be a little bit more selective."
A total of 231 events were held at the centre last year compared with 148 in 2010, Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company reported. The sector is expecting to play an important role in Abu Dhabi's plans to attract 7.9 million hotel guests annually by 2030.
"Looking to the year ahead, Adnec will be hosting Abu Dhabi's largest-ever congress to date in February with the World Ophthalmology Congress 2012 expected to bring in more than 12,000 delegates," the company said.
Events at Abu Dhabi's three event facilities, Adnec, ExCeL London, and Al Ain Convention Centre, hosted 733 events, an increase of 18 per cent over the previous year and a record for the venues.
Adnec is ploughing Dh8bn into developing the Capital Centre exhibition district in Abu Dhabi, with the project including several hotels as well as residential and commercial buildings. Construction on some of the hotels has been delayed, but the company last month opened a Hyatt hotel in the leaning Capital Gate building. With business travellers making up more than 70 per cent of all hotel guests in Abu Dhabi, hoteliers say the exhibitions industry is becoming an increasingly important generator of revenue.
"Our business from exhibitions doubled in 2011 compared to 2010," said Arshad Hussain, the director of sales and marketing at the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr hotel in Abu Dhabi.
"The contribution of Adnec to the hotels in Abu Dhabi has been very valuable in 2011. Adnec has the right and effective strategy of hosting large and medium-size exhibitions in Abu Dhabi.
"Hosting important conferences such as World Ophthalmology Congress will be good for the image of Abu Dhabi as a meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions destination." Lower hotel rates in the capital are also helping to make the destination more competitive. Abu Dhabi acquired ExCeL London for Dh2.3bn in May 2008.
The building will host a range of events for the Olympics this year. Events hosted at ExCeL increased 17 per cent to 284 last year from 242 the previous year.
Adnec is also developing the Dh3.5bn Al Ain Convention Centre district, designed to have conference rooms, hotels and residential and commercial buildings.
Mr Mills said early indications were positive for the sector in Abu Dhabi this year. "We are seeing budgets starting to be approved and money filtering through, so companies I think are more positive than they were a few months ago."
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