Dubai International Airport has replaced its traditional x-ray machines at customs with advanced scanning terminals to ensure smooth and seamless baggage processing and reduce the time it will take for participants to the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF to exit the airport terminal. These measures will also bring long-term benefits to business travelers and holidaymakers.
The announcement was made at a meeting between Dubai 2003 and 120 representatives of the airline and freight communities, to discuss the preparations underway to best service the visiting delegations to the Annual Meetings. The meeting was hosted by the International Transportation and Freight Committee at Dnata.
“We have doubled our capability to process ‘e-gate’ cardholders through immigration and have streamlined our baggage handling procedures to reduce the time to three minutes from airplane to passenger and through customs,” said Head of the International Transportation and Freight Committee and Vice-President, Dnata Agencies, Rashid Al Noori. “As far as e-gate is concerned, we have already issued over 100 cards for visiting delegations and expect to issues at least 600 more. We have also reduced the time it takes an e-gate cardholder to be processed to just 6 seconds.”
A special Dubai 2003 Participants’ Lounge has been prepared to hold between 70 and 100 people at a time, where visa and transport issues will be handled by public relations executives. Visitors would then collect their baggage and walk through customs to meet respective transportation arrangements.
The Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund were first held in Washington DC in 1946. They are hosted by an international city one year in three. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Dubai were selected because of their highly developed transportation and logistics infrastructure, growing importance as a financial hub. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
