Abu Dhabi Department of Tourism and Culture launched 'One Summer Isn't Enough' in 2023 across 12 global markets, produced by Dejavu and created by Serviceplan
ARCHIVEAbu Dhabi Department of Tourism and Culture Bets on Summer With One Campaign Across 12 Markets
"One Summer Isn't Enough" is a 2023 seasonal destination campaign created by Serviceplan Middle East for the Abu Dhabi Department of Tourism and Culture, produced by Dejavu, and launched across 12 global markets under the Experience Abu Dhabi brand to position the United Arab Emirates emirate as a compelling summer travel destination.
The campaign launched on 3 May 2023 at the 30th Arabian Travel Market in Dubai, according to reporting by PR Newswire. Framed as a 360-degree initiative, it spans film, destination-platform activity, and market-level promotional activity connected to Abu Dhabi's summer offers. The premise is direct: the emirate's breadth of indoor attractions, cultural programming, and leisure experiences is so extensive that a single summer visit cannot exhaust it.
In the United Arab Emirates, the campaign operates under the Experience Abu Dhabi destination brand, which the consultancy Prophet developed and launched in January 2022 around a masterbrand promise described as "Find Your Pace," per Prophet's own published account. "One Summer Isn't Enough" is not a standalone brand direction but a seasonal execution of that wider platform, designed to sustain and deepen the destination's year-round appeal narrative.
The 12 markets reached by the campaign span Europe, China, India, the United States, Israel, and Gulf Cooperation Council countries, as identified by Skift in its May 2023 coverage of the initiative. That geographic spread reflects DCT Abu Dhabi's ambition to shift the emirate's seasonal perception simultaneously across its highest-priority source markets, making the campaign one of the more geographically ambitious single-season destination efforts the region has produced. Clapboard scores the campaign 63 out of 100, recognising its structural ambition and multi-market reach while noting room for deeper creative distinctiveness.
ARCHIVEDCT Abu Dhabi entered the 2023 summer season with a declared strategic objective: to challenge traveller misconceptions about visiting the United Arab Emirates during the hotter months. As Skift reported in its May 2023 analysis of the campaign, the authority sought to broaden audience perceptions beyond Abu Dhabi's most prominent landmarks and reframe the emirate as a destination offering sufficient indoor culture, entertainment, and leisure to make the heat irrelevant to the visitor experience.
The strategic logic responds to a structural reality in Gulf tourism. Summer has historically represented a softer booking window for destinations across the United Arab Emirates, with regional travellers frequently choosing cooler international alternatives. DCT Abu Dhabi's own stated objective for 2023 was to attract a total of nearly 24 million visitors, according to PR Newswire, and the emirate did in fact welcome close to that figure, with international arrivals rising by a significant margin year over year, per data reported by Etihad. Against this backdrop, a campaign activating across 12 markets simultaneously was not promotional decoration but a deliberate tool of demand management.
The competitive environment is sharp. Dubai, Abu Dhabi's most immediate destination rival within the United Arab Emirates, operates its own sustained global tourism marketing apparatus and commands stronger international name recognition across many of the same source markets the campaign targets. Beyond the UAE, Qatar recorded more than four million international visitors in 2023, up from the prior year according to Qatar Tourism, demonstrating that Gulf neighbours are actively competing for the same international leisure and recreation traveller. Serviceplan Middle East's strategic response was to lean into abundance rather than climate, positioning Abu Dhabi not as a destination despite the summer season but as one that rewards repeat and extended visits precisely because of what it offers indoors.
Dejavu produced the campaign's creative output under the direction of Serviceplan Middle East. The execution centres on a roster of vibrant, light-hearted films designed to showcase the range of summer activities available across Abu Dhabi, with each film targeting a distinct visitor profile or experience category.
The production assembled a notably varied directorial team. Global films were directed by Nalle Sjoblad, Toby Morris, Anh Vu, and Omar Hilal, according to production credits documented by Withfeeling and Branding in Asia. A separate film featuring Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh was directed by Navzar Eranee. The involvement of Singh as a talent anchor speaks directly to the campaign's India market prioritisation, given his profile as one of the subcontinent's most recognisable faces in travel and lifestyle advertising. Cinematography across the global films was handled by director of photography Mikael Gustafsson, per credits published by Withfeeling. The production's executive producer was Manasvi Gosalia, with Kavya Iyer serving as head of production and Maarouf Bikdache as producer, according to the same sources.
The tonal register across the films is deliberate. Rather than presenting Abu Dhabi through aspirational distance or monumental architecture alone, the creative approach opts for warmth and accessibility, foregrounding the lived leisure and recreation experience. The hashtag vehicle chosen, #InAbuDhabi, functions as both a social aggregation tool and a plain-language invitation. The three media assets at the campaign's core are designed for cross-market deployment without requiring heavy localisation, a pragmatic production decision given the scale of the 12-market rollout across the United Arab Emirates and beyond.
No campaign-specific verified performance data for "One Summer Isn't Enough" — such as view counts, engagement rates, or directly attributable booking uplift — is publicly available at the level of granularity that would allow precise measurement. What the public record does establish is the broader destination context in which the campaign operated.
DCT Abu Dhabi targeted nearly 24 million visitors for 2023, according to PR Newswire, and the emirate came within close reach of that figure, with international arrivals recording a substantial year-over-year increase, per Etihad's published figures. Whether the campaign contributed directly or proportionately to that outcome cannot be confirmed without DCT Abu Dhabi releasing attribution data. What the structure of the campaign does demonstrate is clear intent to move markets at scale: a simultaneous 12-market activation covering Europe, China, India, the United States, Israel, and GCC countries, produced with a multi-director roster and a high-profile talent strategy, represents a material investment in seasonal demand generation for travel and tourism in the United Arab Emirates.
The campaign's launch platform — the 30th Arabian Travel Market in Dubai — provided immediate trade and press amplification, with Skift publishing dedicated coverage on the day of launch and PR Newswire distributing the announcement internationally. That earned media infrastructure added reach beyond the paid film distribution. Clapboard's score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its brief competently and with genuine geographic ambition, while stopping short of the creative distinctiveness that would make it a benchmark for destination advertising in the leisure and recreation category.
"One Summer Isn't Enough" is a 2023 seasonal destination campaign created by Serviceplan Middle East for DCT Abu Dhabi. Produced by Dejavu and launched at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai on 3 May 2023, it ran across 12 global markets under the Experience Abu Dhabi brand, using a series of films to position the emirate as an unmissable summer travel destination.
The campaign targeted 12 markets simultaneously. According to Skift, these included countries across Europe, China, India, the United States, Israel, and Gulf Cooperation Council nations. This spread reflects DCT Abu Dhabi's strategy to shift summer travel perceptions among its highest-priority international source markets for leisure and recreation visitors in a single coordinated push.
Dejavu produced the films using a multi-director structure. According to credits published by Withfeeling and Branding in Asia, global films were directed by Nalle Sjoblad, Toby Morris, Anh Vu, and Omar Hilal. A separate film featuring Ranveer Singh was directed by Navzar Eranee, with Mikael Gustafsson serving as director of photography across the global productions.
The campaign is a seasonal execution of the Experience Abu Dhabi platform, not a standalone rebrand. As Prophet documented, Experience Abu Dhabi launched in January 2022 around a masterbrand promise of "Find Your Pace." "One Summer Isn't Enough" applies that platform framework to the summer travel window, extending the destination brand's year-round relevance narrative across 12 markets.
Clapboard scores the campaign 63 out of 100. The score reflects the initiative's structural ambition — a 12-market, multi-director, film-led travel and tourism campaign launched simultaneously across Europe, Asia, the United States, and the Gulf — while indicating that the creative execution does not fully reach the distinctiveness benchmark set by the top tier of destination advertising work.
Serviceplan Middle East built the campaign around Abu Dhabi's indoor attractions to directly counter the most common barrier to summer travel in the United Arab Emirates: heat. As Skift reported, DCT Abu Dhabi sought to challenge misconceptions about summer visits by demonstrating that the emirate's volume of indoor leisure, culture, and recreation experiences makes the climate a manageable rather than prohibitive factor for international travellers.
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