By Our Staff Writer
Arabian Travel Market (ATM), scheduled for May 3–6, 2027 at Dubai World Trade Centre, will explore how destinations and businesses can respond to the changing motivations of travellers by developing experiences that attract visitors, encourage spending, and create lasting value for local communities.
The 2027 ATM, a major annual event for the global travel and tourism sector, will have the theme ‘Travel without boundaries: Shaping global travel through experience’, reflecting how travellers’ interests, passions and expectations are reshaping where, why and how people travel, while also creating business opportunities across the tourism industry.
According to Danielle Curtis, Regional Portfolio Director – UAE, RX Global, travellers are looking more closely at what a journey allows them to experience, whether that is discovering a culture, pursuing a passion or sharing something memorable with the people around them.
For destinations and businesses, the opportunity is to understand those motivations and build an offering that gives people a compelling reason to visit, he said.
“Travel without boundaries’ reflects how these opportunities extend across the industry,” Curtis said, adding that “through ATM 2027, we want to explore what businesses can create together when they look beyond traditional categories and consider the experience as a whole.”
The theme will be developed through four pillars: Experience without boundaries, Opportunity without boundaries, Innovation without boundaries and Possibility without boundaries.
Together, they will examine how changing traveller motivations influence tourism products, where new markets and commercial opportunities are emerging, how technology can improve the journey, and what collaboration across sectors makes possible, the organizers said.
The theme also reflects a positive longer-term outlook for tourism. According to the ATM Travel Trends Report 2026, international arrivals are projected to grow by 8 percent worldwide and 17 percent across MENASA in 2027, as travel recovers after 2026 disruptions.
Worldwide visitor nights, including domestic and international travel, are projected to exceed 29 billion by 2030, with spending within destinations reaching $10 trillion, the report said.
