Podcast: DCT Abu Dhabi's Emma Campbell reveals key destination marketing insights

Campaign ME

09-05-2025

On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East's On The Record podcast, Emma Campbell, Director of Sector Marketing, Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), discusses changing trends within travel marketing and destination marketing; why marketers should move from using AI to understanding how consumers use AI; and the need to move past transactional relationships with agencies to meaningful partnerships that benefit the industry, the UAE and the Middle East region.
Campbell begins the discussion sharing key insights from Experience Abu Dhabi's recent Kids Recommended initiative, part of the entity's summer campaign brought to life in partnership with Ogilvy.
The research commissioned by Experience Abu Dhabi, the destination brand of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), polled more than 7,000 children aged 5 to 12 – and their parents – from across nine countries, including France, Italy, Germany, China, UK, US, and India, as well as UAE and Saudi Arabia. It revealed that 90 per cent of children worldwide want holiday activities that helps them make new friends; 95 per cent of kids want to try activities they can tell their friends about; and 91 per cent are inspired by what their friends have done.
'I've always said that as a marketer, we have to be the voice of the consumer,' Campbell said. 'And to be that voice, I need to deeply understand who the consumer is. Now, what we see in Abu Dhabi, particularly over the summer season is that families are our audiences. Also, quite often, we've seen that the kids are the ones influencing the decisions. So, we decided that instead of conducting research with parents, let's just do some research with kids; let's hear what the kids want and what's the perfect holiday in the kids mind; let's validate whether our destination is, indeed, perfect for kids.'
The campaign included seven-day itineraries, ideated and designed by children and for children, which translated into an experiential film. Children were vocal about how they'd like to spend their holidays, whether that's at water parks, zoos, wildlife safaris, desert discoveries and five-star hotels or time spent enjoying experiences such as kayaking, climbing, trying new food and watching live events such as Formula 1.
'An interesting insight was the importance of human connection. In a world where everyone's nervous about losing their children to screen time, gaming and online worlds, what we actually heard from the mouths of children is that they love to have fun with their family on holiday; they love to make new friends; and they love to come back and talk to their friends about these trips. I thought that was really heart warming,' Campbell added.
How destination marketers ought to use AI
The conversation also touches upon the need to go beyond marketers 'using AI' for copy, creative and speed-to-market, and move more toward understanding how consumers use AI, so that AI is giving them the correct responses that marketers want them to have. This means going beyond targeting consumers to learning how to 'talk to AI' and 'teach AI' where to pick up credible information from.
Campbell said, 'I think marketers have been very focused on how to use AI, and have often lost sight of how their consumers are using AI. For me, that's the really fascinating piece. What we're hearing is that in the travel and tourism industry is that AI is being used by up to 40 per cent of travellers to plan their itineraries.'
'Also, what we're seeing is that while AI is creating these itineraries, they're pulling all this information from the destination websites. So, what we need to take into consideration is that the content we're creating for our website, which has to be authentic and needs human intervention, is not just living on our website but is also showing up in other places. And that's exciting because that's what we want – dissemination of content en masse – so that it is at the fingertips of people planning their trips,' she added.
From transactions to partnerships
The podcast discussion also delved into the need for the brand and marketing industry to build better partnerships and meaningful relationships that mutually benefit brands as well as the agencies serving them.
Campbell, who has worked across multiple markets such as the UK, Australia, Fiji and the UAE, said, 'The principles of working with an agency must stem from a true partnership, and has to be set up as a functional partnership.'
When asked what that means or looks like, she responded, 'For us working in destination marketing, we know that the agency working with us doesn't need to only understand the brand, it needs to understand the destination. This means making the effort to really immersing the agency into the product and setting up the agency relationship in a way that truly feels like a partnership.'
Taking an example, Campbell added, 'We onboarded Ogilvy as our consumer PR agency 12 months ago, and the relationship has worked really well because they're sitting with us in our offices on a day-to-day basis; they have team members embedded in our task forces; they're with us on every project that we're working on; and they behave as an extension of our team. As such, we treat them with a huge amount of respect and trust to deliver excellent work for us. So, when we work on something like the Kids Recommended initiative – which is quite different from anything we've done before – there's this inherent layer of trust that we can work through it together and make something excellent happen because we understand each other.'
For more such insights from a very intriguing conversation, watch the full video above.
CREDITS:
Guest: Emma Campbell, Director of Sector Marketing, Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi)
Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East
Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group
Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
Studio: Ahmed Abdelwahab, Studio Manager, Motivate Media Group
Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group