My Destination, an online travel guide with a focus on local knowledge and expertise, re-launches its portal of 68 destination across the world from Abu Dhabi, to Malta, Singapore, Kenya and Tenerife. The company aims to add another 55 destinations in the coming months.

My Destination Abu Dhabi’s on-the-ground team has been building relationships with local businesses and the Abu Dhabi community. The new site cements its USP of local expertise by showcasing local tips, reviews and exclusive offers. As a result, users access the type of information that they rarely find on global travel guide sites, and only get once they arrive in Abu Dhabi.

Since My Destination’s earliest days ‘local expertise’ has been its mantra. Today this differentiates it from the more traditional global yet ‘operate-from-headquarters-only’ websites. “Traditional travel sites can carry a lot of general information. But that’s a commodity. My Destination is more than that – we aim to give users value-add. For us this means providing ‘local expertise’ and there’s only one way to get that and it’s with people on the ground. We absolutely pride ourselves in our ‘hand-made’ approach to each of our destinations so that we offer the service and knowledge that only local people can provide. Our new site is reflects this best,” said Neil Waller, CEO.

My Destination’s local teams have created substantial amounts of professional-quality videos and industry-leading panoramic virtual tours (3,000 in total and growing). These, together with close to 1,100 articles and a quarter of a million photographs are all aimed to inspire and inform users who have visited the portal 18 million times in the last year.

“My Destination Abu Dhabi has always been able to achieve a global reach and now with the launch of the new site and with emphasis on marketing and promotion at a global scale we are confident that our local businesses will be even more successful in attracting visitors. The addition of many new features on the site also means that we’re offering a whole host of benefits to local users. We are a global brand, whilst still servicing our local audience,” said Sajeev, Business Manager, My Destination.

My Destination is also increasing its offering by providing users with online booking. To offer competitive deals it has partnered up with global providers for accommodation (Hotels Combined), flights (Sky Scanner), Car Rental (CarTrawler) and travel insurance (WorldNomads). My Destination is about being locally informed, and globally inspired.