Mohamed Khater has an unrivaled passion for tourism and has excelled in becoming one of the greatest advocates for tourism development in the Middle East. Having dedicated his entire career to the tourism sector, he has become an expert in his field and is well-known throughout the industry for his professionalism and cordial demeanor. Currently, he is the Regional General Manager at Destination Touristik Services.
Mohamed has honed his skills in destination promotion and marketing, negotiating, budgeting, and leisure sales during his years working with government administrations and international organizations to promote tourism in the Middle East. He has also had the honor of being a member of the team that opened and promoted the world’s longest zipline.
He is a real supporter of Ras Al Khaimah. He has been based in the Emirate since 2009. He worked in several roles, and his last role was for more than seven years with RAKTDA as Director – Destination Tourism Development.
Learn more about Mohamed Khater and his Company through our interview below.
Explain the background of you and the company in detail.
Destination Touristic Services is a global B2B incoming agency owned by DER Touristik Group to provide services to in-house tour operators and third-party clients worldwide.
Destination Touristic Services offers years of experience as an accommodation provider and in transfers, local tours, and special events organizations. The company is committed to innovation and dynamism in the tourism industry. Our local destination managers in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, and our headquarters in Palma de Mallorca are supported.
As an incoming global agency, Destination Touristic Services UAE / Miracle Tourism provides a wide range of high-quality services to tour operators in different markets. The traditional services we offer are accommodation, excursions, and transfers. Destination touristic services enrich its service range with a representative, airport service, groups and incentives, and as well sports division.
What are your goals?
My main goal as a business leader is to maintain and develop the existing business. Apart from that, I have 5 major goals, which include:
- Diversity of business segments and source markets
- Set a plan of expansion of the company in terms of services, locations, and products offerings
- To capture a bigger market share
- Growth of profit margin with increasing efficiency
- To bring new partners and businesses locally, regionally, and internationally
What do you feel is the biggest strength of yourself/your company right now?
Developing new destinations in several countries.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Human Capital, Climate Change, Political tension, and Economy instability
Give us one word that describes you the best.
Optimistic or Positively
What makes you excited about Mondays?
- Stop letting the culture tell you how to feel about Monday.
- Be clear about what the week ahead has in store.
- Keep similar sleep patterns during the weekend as you do the work week.
- Schedule something you cannot wait to experience.
- Put the previous week to bed (on Friday preferably)
Do you think your company is adapting to digitalization?
I believe digitalization plays a major role in the development of a business. We think that it assists us in the evolution process too. Hence, we work extensively to adjust company policies and strategies into more digitally accepted platforms within different segments. This needs a lot of training and understanding of the partners and the clients. As a result, the company’s pathway toward digitalization is the key to evolvement.
What are your company’s strategies, and how do they stand unique from your competitors?
Combined aspects. We need to plan our own activities with short, medium, and long-term strategies.
Our philosophy is to turn our core company commercials into different segments. This makes us different from others. The two core segments are diversity planning and strategy with a set of capacity into the basket.
What are the key values which helped you to overcome the roadblocks/challenges in your career? Tell us something about your memorable incident in your leadership.
First of all, being optimistic has been a major player here. You need to be optimistic and hold on to teamwork to overcome challenges. Apart from that, being supportive of the team, business, partners, and clients is also crucial. We need to hack resilience with the current situation. In addition, we should focus on achieving targets.
How do you see the company changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?
We will be adapting to a more dynamic approach in our company within the next 2 years. In addition, we are planning to have a different base of our business with a plan to expand the company into different regions, countries, and destinations.
Further, we will keep changing the work culture to support gender equality, team improvement, and the development of the team’s skills.
I can see myself as creating the change by bringing several clients and innovative strategies to the table.
Where is your leadership going? What benefits do your clients get from your company in this competitive world?
IIP – Investing in people. I think that IIP is essential. It’s crucial to encourage the team, look after their interests and needs, inspire them, and expect the best from everything. It’s stimulating work and productivity.
How do your clients get benefits from your company at par with the current industry standards?
“Client satisfaction comes from employee satisfaction.”
If you make your team satisfied, they will be more productive. When they are productive, they do better jobs and serve the customers, making them feel happier. That’s why employee contentment is crucial to have a happy client base.
Connect with Mohamed Khater on LinkedIn.
Find Destination Touristik Services on LinkedIn.