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UAE travellers embrace shorter, event-driven trips as visa demand surges
Growing demand for multiple international trips and seamless visa processing is reshaping travel behaviour, as Atlys opens its first global experience centre in Dubai
- PUBLISHED: Thu 16 Jul 2026, 9:33 PM
International travel demand has returned to pre-pandemic levels, but traveller behaviour is changing rapidly, with more people taking multiple shorter trips each year and planning journeys around major events and seasonal experiences, an expert said.
“The growth is already here,” said Mohak Nahta, Founder and CEO of Atlys, citing UN Tourism data showing 1.4 billion international arrivals in 2024. “What’s changing more fundamentally is the shape of demand. Travellers are taking multiple shorter international trips a year instead of one long holiday, and increasingly travelling around events and seasons.”
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He pointed to seasonal spikes in demand for destinations such as Japan during cherry blossom season, Germany around Oktoberfest and London during Wimbledon, reflecting a wider shift towards experience-led travel. Atlys has seen similar momentum, reaching an annualised run rate of more than 700,000 visas and growing 11-fold since its 2024 Series B funding round.
The trend is creating new opportunities for travel technology firms that can simplify increasingly frequent cross-border journeys. According to Nahta, travellers are seeking both speed and certainty when making visa applications, particularly for trips tied to holidays, family visits and other important occasions. “Ultimately, we want travellers to have the flexibility to choose the experience that works best for them, without compromising on the speed, convenience and transparency that Atlys is known for,” he said.
Artificial intelligence is also playing a growing role in streamlining the process. Nahta said Atlys has built technology that reads documents, identifies missing information before submission, predicts timelines and provides real-time updates throughout the application journey. “The technology gives our advisors context and does the heavy lifting, while judgement... stays human,” he said.
Against this backdrop, Atlys has opened its first physical experience centre at BurJuman Mall in Dubai, marking the company’s first brick-and-mortar presence globally. The UAE is the company’s largest market outside India and accounts for a significant share of its international business. The centre allows travellers to receive in-person visa guidance while completing the process digitally through the app.
The move is less about traditional retail expansion and more about building traveller confidence, Nahta said. “We’re experience-focused, not medium-focused,” he noted. “Success here isn’t ROI in the traditional sense. It’s building the trust that lets our digital business scale.”
Dubai was chosen because of its status as one of the world’s busiest travel hubs and its large expatriate population, reinforcing the emirate’s role as a gateway for increasingly mobile global travellers.
