The idea for the Museum of the Future in Dubai began in 2013 as a temporary pop-up exhibit at the World Government Summit. The impact was clear immediately. Recognizing its potential, Dubai’s leader, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, decided to give the pop-up a permanent home. He built a space to let these ideas grow, creating a global platform for innovation and forward thinking. On February 22, 2022, the unique Museum of the Future opened, with its first ticket booked on GetYourGuide.
“Museum of the Future resembles how our country and its leadership think and how we want to position ourselves globally,” Azza Al Nuaimi, the museum’s acting COO, explains. “For sure, history, our culture, and other museums are still available. They are a key pillar of what Dubai is, but this is a hub all about what comes next.”
That hub, inside an unmissable eye-shaped building adorned with calligraphy, welcomes over a million guests annually. Here, Azza shares how an unwavering commitment to customer excellence and innovation, plus a crucial partnership with GetYourGuide, has kept the museum operating at capacity from day one.
What is the Museum of the Future’s mission?
We exist to inspire individuals and organizations to imagine, design, and create a better future. We’re a platform for innovation, using different methods to explore how science, technology, and human creativity can address global challenges.
The museum is designed as a journey into the future, 2071 to be exact, so it’s always about thinking ahead.
The building is among Dubai’s most iconic. Tell us about the design.
There are so many elements to the design. One features three quotes by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed about the future, beautifully wrapped around the facade by Emirati calligrapher Mattar bin Lahej. You’ve got the green mound it sits on, representing sustainability. The main form is shaped like a human eye, foreseeing the future. The void in the middle represents the unknown future, and us trying to figure that out. It’s stunning, day and night.
Many people think the museum is inside the grassy mound, and the main body is just a statue. In reality, the experience takes you around the eye, right behind the calligraphy, which is actually a series of windows.
You’ve worked with GetYourGuide from the beginning. Why was partnering with OTAs always part of your strategy?
We didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket. With direct channels, we get a lot of business during peak season, but during quieter periods, especially summer, it tends to slow down. With OTAs, the business is steady throughout the year.
We wanted a healthy mix: 50% through our direct channels and 50% through OTAs. That’s always been our strategy, and it works quite well. In fact, our very first booking came through GetYourGuide, before we even opened to the public.
Were OTAs important for reaching an international audience?
GetYourGuide opened up the entire world for us. It helps us reach markets that would be very difficult for us to access on our own and speaks to them in their local languages. Last year, we had guests from over 200 countries.
How do the data and tools GetYourGuide provides help you?
Data is crucial for us. We look closely at conversion rates, where visitors are coming from, and when they are booking. We speak to our local GetYourGuide team regularly to discuss how we can optimize, and often new ideas come from those conversations.
Our calendar used to be open for just two months. With data from GetYourGuide, we saw strong demand for advance booking in markets like Australia; during peak season, up to 80% of people book a month or more in advance. So we opened the calendar to three then four months ahead, and we’re seeing bookings come in that far out.
Beyond the building itself, what do visitors react to most during their visit?
They notice our hospitable culture. Our guest relations team welcomes everyone who enters the museum and makes sure they have everything they need. If you require a certain language, we try to find someone on the team who speaks it to guide you. If we notice from an ID that it’s a child’s birthday, we go out of our way to celebrate and make it special.
These aren’t things people ask for, but because of our culture and what Dubai stands for, we want to make the customer journey the best it can be. We want you to feel that you weren’t just in the future, but that you experienced the vision of the UAE in one place.
We have a boy with autism who comes to the museum every Saturday. It’s a ritual for him. All the staff know him, and he’s become part of the museum family. He goes through the whole experience and is amazed, as if it were his first time; then he leaves every weekend with a smile on his face. That is why we do it.
How do you curate the exhibits to keep the experience fresh?
We are not your traditional museum; we are ever-evolving, and we have to constantly tweak and change exhibits to avoid drifting into the past. We will reach a point when 2071 isn’t that far away, so it will often be renewed with new narratives to ensure we’re up to date with the world and technology.
How do you attract returning visitors?
We want to build loyalty and engage people in the Museum of the Future’s mission, so they feel involved. Our marketing team puts a lot of effort into creating a story that makes customers feel they belong at the museum.
Our content is updated as we evolve to show people that there are new things to experience, and that strategy helps bring people back.
Can you share any upcoming innovations or new exhibits?
We always want to give customers the best, and we’re working on something we’re all excited about, but it’s still a secret. Colossal Biosciences recently announced a partnership with us, too.
They’re creating the Colossal Biovault and World Preservation Lab — a huge conservation project that will safeguard endangered species for future generations.
What does future success look like to you, and what role does GetYourGuide play in that strategy?
For us, success is about creating a future where humans think positively about how to unite and work toward what is better for the world. The future of humanity is one of our biggest priorities. Growth isn’t just about volume; it’s about making sure every visitor to Dubai has the opportunity to experience the museum.
GetYourGuide has been with us from day one. We don’t see GetYourGuide only as a partner, but as an extended arm of the museum to reach guests we couldn’t bring in on our own.
It was impossible to get a ticket when you opened in 2022, and it is still often fully booked. How do you manage and fulfill such high demand?
We welcomed almost 750,000 guests in our first 10 months. In 2025, we brought in 1.3 million guests. The challenge is that our journey starts with a “rocket” media elevator that accommodates about 45 people per journey.
We could actually pack more in, but that would make it much less enjoyable. Instead, we extended our hours to accommodate as many guests as possible — 12 hours a day, seven days a week — without compromising the visitor experience.
Have there been unexpected challenges along the way?
We’re lucky that, up until this year, it’s been seamless. When the recent regional conflict happened, we were hit with multiple cancellations and date changes. The team was overwhelmed.
GetYourGuide, without hesitation, helped our team mitigate cancellations and ensure every guest was properly and quickly taken care of.
Is there anything GetYourGuide does that stands out compared to other OTAs?
It’s how quickly you can book. The technology makes it so easy. We currently offer our website in Arabic and English. Still, most GetYourGuide customers can read about what to expect when visiting the Museum of the Future in their native language, which helps encourage and give them confidence to book.
Also, they fully support us on rate parity, and their own safe measures prevent fraudulent tickets, which are non-negotiables for us.
What advice would you give to another attraction not already working with GetYourGuide?
They’re missing out. It’s not a good idea not to have your base right, and GetYourGuide is one of the most important partners you can have on board. The setup is straightforward, and they’ll help you reach visitors worldwide without any extra effort.
Key takeaways
- Use partners to reach the world. Through GetYourGuide’s localized platform, the museum can easily reach visitors worldwide without producing multilingual marketing campaigns in-house. Germany (28%), the UK (16%), the US (10%), France (9%), and Italy (8%) are the top five markets through GetYourGuide.
- Rely on data to spot opportunities. By analyzing booking patterns on GetYourGuide, the Museum of the Future noticed that international travelers were booking further in advance. This enables them to do so, capturing more bookings from long-haul markets.
- Don’t compromise the customer experience. Rather than packing more people into limited spaces to boost revenue, the museum chose to expand its operating hours, preserving the quality of every visitor’s journey and ensuring good reviews.
- Fight fraud with the right partners. With GetYourGuide’s secure digital ticketing and fraud-prevention tools, the museum maintains brand integrity and avoids the headaches of chargebacks and counterfeit tickets.
- Find a healthy channel mix. By maintaining a 50/50 split between direct sales and OTAs, Museum of the Future ensures a more consistent flow of business throughout the year, even during traditionally quieter periods, like the Dubai summer.
