Madeira is making final preparations as it steps up to host the World Travel Awards Grand Final Gala Ceremony 2024 on 24 November. The leaders of the global travel and tourism industry are gathering in the capital Funchal to find out who amongst them has been voted the industry’s best of the best.

The inaugural International MICE Summit (IMS24) will bring together over 1,000 global leaders from the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) industry between 15-17 December at Mohammed Bin Salman Nonprofit City (MISK) in Riyadh, hosted by the Saudi Conventions & Exhibitions General Authority (SCEGA).

Tourism operators and local Reef industry worked through the night during the most remarkable coral spawning event on the planet, learning cutting-edge restoration techniques to help boost healthy coral numbers.

The annual coral spawning event, triggered by the November full moon, sees the Great Barrier Reef’s magnificent corals burst into life in an underwater ‘snowstorm’ by releasing trillions of eggs and sperm into the water in a mass breeding phenomenon, which Sir David Attenborough describes as ‘one of the greatest of all natural spectacles’.

An exclusive whitepaper produced for Arabian Travel Market (ATM) by Digital Tourism Think Tank (DTTT) has highlighted that only 15% of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to tourism are on track to be achieved by 2030 according to the body, underscoring the need for more action to be taken across the sector.