The Dubai World Trade Centre has played a pivotal role in the growth of Dubai’s business tourism and trade since its inauguration in 1979. Next month it will host GITEX GLOBAL, one of the biggest tech and start-up shows in the world, with over 6,700 companies from 130 countries. Trixie LohMirmand, Executive Vice President at the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), spoke to Intelligent CXO about the vision and aims of the trade centre and how she motivates her team to bring real value to the industries they serve and contribute to the betterment of society through their portfolio of events.
What has your career looked like so far and how has the organisation grown since you joined the team?
It has been one of great discovery to fully appreciate how, through our strategies, our business has the power to mobilise ecosystems and to catalyse and shape the development of the industries we serve, especially in sectors that are evolving at blistering pace.
The impetus to achieve not only scale but also excellence is our proudest achievement. We’ve built a culture of considering first what’s best for the industries and stakeholders we serve before our own business targets. This has empowered us to successfully ramp up our regional events to emerge as the largest in the world and simultaneously achieving recognition through independent surveys as the best events in the world, for delivery of service excellence and business outcomes. To achieve mega scale and globally the highest NPS [Net Promoter Score] quality is a phenomenon rarely achieved by event organisers.
I’m humbled and quietly proud of the unequivocal trust and support from the leadership to supercharge our local home grown Arab-originated brands, propelling them onto some of the world’s biggest and most dynamic markets to become the number one reference globally. Our international achievements and launches in six countries have come fast and furious in merely the last 48 months, after we made the strategic decision to venture overseas. We now have offices in Germany, Singapore and Morocco in a year.
We’ve moved from routine management of events and achieving event-focused KPIs to delivering meaningful outcomes in creating far wider economic and societal impact on the Dubai and UAE economy and industries and cites we serve internationally.
We are proud to be contributing to the Dubai D33 Vision to become the top best three cities globally.
With nearly three decades of experience in the global events industry, what has been your guiding vision in leading the Events Management division at DWTC, and how has it evolved?
We remain steadfast and focused on being outstanding and to bring real value to the industries we serve and betterment of society through our portfolio of events.
Our ability and willingness to pivot, acclimatise, recalibrate, move fast with limitless confidence and collective belief is what drives us further and faster, never mind that economies fluctuate and industries flounder and rise.
Over the years we’ve experienced the metamorphosis of our projects and also our people. We are guided by our intuition, common sense, measured trust and for technical outcomes – data too. As our teams enlarged and our portfolio multiplied at high speed, I make sure I empower my team with more than they can comfortably manage, thrusting them with assignments that shall evoke skills and abilities which lie latent. I’m determined to scale them through environments of personal and professional conflicts so they are stretched dynamically beyond their known limits to become even more accomplished.
Can you share some of the key strategies or initiatives that have driven strategic and commercial growth success within your role at DWTC?
At the core of it, we are not motivated to organise events to fill the calendar. Our first instinct is to think how and what else we can do through our expertise and networks to advance the different industries and truly support them to create more business and meaningful outcomes. We are fixated on enlarging the ecosystem for all stakeholders and taking them to discover new topics and destinations so their business remains competitive.
Because we truly believe that when our clients and ecosystems grow first, we grow even bigger later. We shall not organise an event ‘for the sake of it’ which is also the maxim that guided us to decline numerous opportunities for new events propositions.
We think and put industries and our clients first before events.
The events industry has faced unprecedented challenges in recent years. How has DWTC adapted to these changes, and can you highlight any innovations that have been implemented to ensure continued success?
In the last two decades, both the regional and global economies and consequently the events industry have boomed and busted, and risen again. The single biggest existential threat on the events ecosystem was the COVID pandemic. But our rock-solid belief in the power of people over technology was unwavering.
Over the years, Dubai, the UAE and our events business have built resilience and quick response mechanism to manoeuvre around and over geo-economic and social headwinds. Our biggest innovation is our investment in our people, taking chances on our team by involving them in devising strategy and then executing them in cycles of commercial adversity. Their ownership of this challenge and the development of self-belief, resourcefulness and the collective confidence in a unified mission over time becomes a conviction. This inspires confidence and trust in our stakeholders and clients’ long-term.
Never mind what next comes our way, we are pretty ingenious in flying the plane while building it at the same time.
You place a strong emphasis on creative marketing and talent development. How do you approach nurturing talent within your team and what qualities do you believe are essential for success in the events industry?
I lead from the front and my team knows I’m with them from the ground floor to apex. We have a talented and truly committed bunch of energetic and motivated colleagues. My responsibility as their manager is to offer them the opportunities to catalyse them from good to outstanding event professionals.
We do not advocate a culture of individual prima donnas. We are a very team-centric business across the company. We are able to deliver consistently solid events because we have a motley crew with a creative mélange of styles, abilities, cultures and individualities which is simply combustible when they come together.
Being innately creative is a plus. The ability and commitment to drive a creative process with innovative and fresh outcomes is more important. Any great product is the combined output of different people with varied expertise. The finesse to evoke the best out of each individual is an art. I’m still learning to be patient.
Like others, our business requires people who are talented and ‘want it bad enough’ to be successful. Unfortunately, these qualities don’t always co-exist in individuals despite the availability of great career opportunities.
We remain humble and shall always be number two. I’m most proud of who and what we are.
How important is it to you to act as a role model to young women with leadership aspirations?
Everyone’s aspirations are different. What I stand for and advocate may not be the model for others hence I’m not out there to ‘actively’ act as a role model. It’s important for me that young women know their own aspirations and desired outcomes and believe wholeheartedly that opportunities are out there for them to claim it. It’s the personal and professional adversities that I’ve surmounted that led me to accomplish what I could today. I would like them to know it is possible but the journey to get there is a baptism of fear, tears, making hard choices, taking risks, losing hope and coming back stronger. There’s no detour.
Looking ahead, what trends do you anticipate will shape the future of the global events industry, and how is DWTC positioning itself to lead and adapt to these trends?
There’s significant consolidation and M&A activities in the global events industry. The end of the COVID pandemic also unleashed a lot of events across sectors, resulting in great fragmentation. Clients are increasingly questioning value and impact in the events business. At DWTC we continue to focus on differentiating our propositions and remain die-hard on delivering great outcomes for the industries’ ecosystems and communities we serve as a first mission.
We will work harder on under-served sectors and markets where we can create the biggest positive impact in more creative partnerships with the stakeholders. Therefore, we have recently announced the launch of GITEX DIGI_HEALTH 5.0 in Asia, a sector we believe AI shall exert great influence in leapfrogging the healthcare industry.
GITEX GLOBAL is just around the corner. Can you share any insight into what goes on behind the scenes to deliver an event of this scale, and what visitors to this year’s event can expect?
Every year GITEX GLOBAL outdoes itself, not just in scale but in new opportunities for the international digital community. This sell-out edition with over 6,700 companies from 130 countries has attracted many new government and private sector fans from as far as Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, to rising digital nations like Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are also presenting globally the year’s largest project showcase, use cases, learnings and debates on AI and DeepTech with over 3,000 exhibiting companies in this sector. There is a significant spotlight on scale-ups and high growth start-ups as Expand North Star, our dedicated start-up event, advances to the next phase of ecosystem development.
Most exciting of all, we shall present to our global audience the GITEX universe of new opportunities in GITEX EUROPE, GITEX ASIA, GITEX NIGERIA, GITEX AFRICA Morocco, AI Everything Global and GITEX DIGI_HEALTH 5.0.
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