His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, has appointed Dr. Mohamed Abdalla Al Zaabi as Undersecretary of the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, with effect from 5 October. The appointment marks a significant transition for the emirate's tourism and cultural leadership, bringing the head of Miral into Abu Dhabi's senior civil service at a critical moment in the emirate's expansion of large-scale entertainment destinations.
The resolution, issued by the Crown Prince in his capacity as Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, elevates Al Zaabi to a senior government position overseeing policy and strategy development across the emirate's culture and tourism sectors. It follows recent structural changes within the department, where Saood Abdulaziz Al Hosani, Undersecretary since 2020, was promoted to Director General of the Abu Dhabi Media Office. No search firm involvement has been disclosed by the government or by Miral.
Al Zaabi, who holds a doctorate and studied at INSEAD, has spent the past eleven years building Miral into a regional force in leisure and entertainment destination management. He joined the company in 2015 and was named Group Chief Executive Officer, overseeing the transformation of Yas Island into a destination drawing some 34 million visits a year. Before Miral he served as a computer engineer in the military for six years and held a series of positions at the developer Aldar Properties from 2008 onward, including roles in integrated technologies, estate development and strategic investments. Under his leadership Miral has invested more than nine billion dirhams across completed Yas Island projects, forging partnerships with SeaWorld Entertainment, Warner Bros. and The Walt Disney Company. Miral is the developer, builder and operator of the Disneyland resort announced for Yas Island.
The Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, created in 2012 through a merger of the emirate's tourism authority and its authority for culture and heritage, is the principal government entity driving growth of the culture and tourism sectors. It employs roughly 1,800 people and manages strategic assets including the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Zayed National Museum. The department is chaired by Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, who also chaired Miral before taking up the department leadership. Its tourism strategy for the end of the decade targets 39 million visitors a year and a contribution of 90 billion dirhams to national GDP, alongside the creation of 178,000 jobs.
The appointment is strategically significant given Miral's dominant role in executing Abu Dhabi's tourism expansion agenda and the close alignment between Al Zaabi's experience managing major entertainment projects and the department's policy objectives. The move may signal an intention to deepen coordination between government strategy and private sector execution in destination development, particularly as the emirate prepares for a series of major openings. The department's own biography of Al Zaabi describes him as holding the Miral role concurrently, and neither party has stated that he is leaving the company. The appointment represents an unusually direct transition of a leading private sector entertainment executive into a senior civil service position, reflecting the emirate's model of integrating business and government expertise in key economic sectors.
