Abu Dhabi will be the talk of Ireland next week when award-winning Irish radio and TV personality, Sean Moncrieff, broadcasts the ever-popular Newstalk 106-108 show live from the emirate from Monday 14 to Friday 18 May.

For the week-long Moncrieff in Abu Dhabi special - a joint initiative by Etihad Airways, which flies 10 times a week from Dublin to Abu Dhabi International Airport, the five-star, beachfront Jumeirah at Etihad Towers hotel and Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority - the show’s five-strong team has lined up notable interviews with some of the Emirates’ most-recognised Irish residents, including Cairan Madden, the Irish Ambassador to the UAE, Gerald Lawless, Executive Chairman of the Jumeirah Group and Richard Cregan, CEO of Yas Marina Circuit – home of the 2012 Formula One™ Etihad Airways Grand Prix.

With considerable portions of the show - dubbed a “lively mix of phone-ins, insightful text messages and stories from around the world and down your street” - focusing on what visitors can see and do in Abu Dhabi, other interview spots will feature a series of local guest speakers discussing everything from cuisine and culture, to heritage and architecture.

“The whole team can’t wait to get out to Abu Dhabi and start broadcasting,” said Sean, who has picked up seven PPI Radio Awards since he started presenting the afternoon show in May 2004. “We’ve got so much exciting content lined up; our listeners are in for a real treat.

“Irish interest in Abu Dhabi is building with the emirate’s planned July promotion in Galway to mark the end of the Volvo Ocean Race and with the recent news that Etihad has bought a shareholding in our national carrier Aer Lingus.

“With these increasingly strong ties between Abu Dhabi and Ireland, we’re hoping to depict what the legendary Arabian hospitality is all about.”

In addition to Sean broadcasting the show’s core content live from Jumeirah at Etihad Towers, a towering property overlooking Abu Dhabi’s pristine Corniche, much-loved man-in-the-field, Henry McKean, will also file his ‘Henry’s World’ segments. Henry will tour key Abu Dhabi tourism attractions, such as the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, travel to an authentic, Emirati desert camp in Al Kateem and experience a traditional Ayalla celebration dance at the UAE capital’s Heritage Village on the Corniche Breakwater.

Moncrieff in Abu Dhabi comes after Ireland jumped in to the emirate’s top 25 international source markets during Q1 of this year. From January to March, some 3,400 Irish guests stayed in Abu Dhabi’s hotels and hotel apartments – a 20% rise on the 2,844 guests tallied in the comparative period in 2011.

To maintain the spike, Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority hopes to leverage the Moncrieff show’s domestic popularity and encourage some of its 93,000 daily listeners to consider Abu Dhabi as a potential holiday destination.

Newstalk 106-108, the only commercial radio station in Ireland to take on an exclusively talk-based format, breached the 300,000 daily listener mark last year.

Tune in to Moncrieff via its live web stream on www.newstalk.ie or follow the show and competition updates on twitter @seanmoncrieff & @carolineclarke or facebook/moncrieffnewstalk

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