Visit Dubai Arabic | From Showing Dubai to Revealing Its Soul
Visit Dubai Arabic Strategy
When we took over the Visit Dubai Arabic account in November, we came in with one goal. Bring Dubai’s soul to the forefront for the GCC visitors this account speaks to, and keep testing ideas until we find what actually landed.
A city like Dubai doesn’t need an introduction. What it needed was someone willing to look past the landmarks and find what’s underneath them, the soul of the place, in the small human moments a skyline photo never captures.
So we asked one question before every piece of content. What does it feel like to be a visitor standing here right now? A visitor photographing something locals barely notice. A visitor finding their group of friends in a new city. A morning routine no visitor planned for, but every visitor ends up with. That’s where Dubai’s soul actually lives, in moments like these far more than in the skyline itself.
Finding the Soul, Month Over Month
In practice, three things carried that idea through the account.
One of our main strategies was leaning into UGC-looking content. Shot and edited to feel unpolished, the kind that blends naturally into a feed instead of announcing itself as an ad. Because it doesn’t look produced, it’s harder to scroll past. It reads like something a visitor posted themselves, not something a brand paid for.
We also gave visitors something to do with the city, not just something to look at. Competitions, stickers, giveaways, small low-effort interactions that turned scrolling into participating. The format mattered less than the invitation. If someone can join in three seconds, some percentage of them will.
And we paid attention to what actually worked. National days, Eid, major cultural moments happening in real time consistently outperformed anything planned three weeks in advance, so we leaned into those moments as much as our own calendar, and let them carry more weight in the content mix.
That’s the version of Dubai we chose to tell, up close and lived-in.
The Results Came In
- 10% YoY increase in organic engagement rate, now sitting at 1.8%
- +2.1% YoY increase in organic views
- 10% YoY increase in followers
- Nearly 40% increase in saves
All organic. And all of it came from producing less content over the year, not more. Quality carried the account further than volume ever did. With less content, more feeling, and a closer look at the city we were already telling stories about.
