Arab customers aren’t just Arabs. (And other things you didn’t know about the GCC and MENA markets.)

Three things we learned from the WIM Insights webinar with Samar Shawareb of Arabia Weddings. (There are many more.)

There is a widespread idea in Italy about Gulf clients. It sounds something like this: "yes, they pay well, but they are complicated." A reassuring form of a judgment that is only half true. Yes, Gulf couples marrying in Italy spend significant amounts. No, they are not particularly complicated — they are simply different, in specific ways that can be learned. And yes, a large portion of Gulf weddings that could have taken place in Italy end up in Greece, Turkey, or Portugal because the Italian vendor didn't respond to a Saturday afternoon WhatsApp message.

Samar Shawareb, founder and CEO of Arabia Weddings — the most authoritative B2B publication for the Gulf wedding industry, with twenty years of experience in the MENA market — was the guest of our June webinar. She provided a clear picture, packed with specific operational details, on how the Gulf market coming to Italy truly works.

The insights are numerous. We share three of them here. You can find the others in their entirety within the WIM community.

First insight: WhatsApp has replaced email

Research by Arabia Weddings shows that 85% of GCC couples ask to receive the first proposal from an Italian vendor via WhatsApp. Personal, not Business. This is a channel shift that doesn't concern marketing — it concerns the first point of commercial contact. If your process still starts with an email, you are starting at a disadvantage compared to competing vendors who handle WhatsApp with the same level of professionalism they apply to their inbox.

And it doesn't stop there: the expected response speed is within a few hours, weekends included. A message sent on Saturday afternoon expects a reply on the same day. "I am on vacation" is not an acceptable response unless it has been communicated as such in advance.

Second insight: the Zaffe is often non-negotiable (and you don't know what it is)

The Zaffe is the musical troupe that accompanies the groom's entrance to an Arab wedding ceremony. Percussionists, sometimes melodic instrumentalists, and ritual chants. For the majority of Gulf weddings, it is a non-optional element — "a wedding without a Zaffe is not a wedding." There are very few specialized troupes in Italy, concentrated in Milan and Rome. During high season, they book up rapidly.

If an Arab lead comes in and you don't already have a Zaffe contact in your database, you start with a small handicap that the client perceives immediately. Building the right contacts is essential. Failing to do so is an unnecessary risk.

Third insight: directories matter more than your website

For the Gulf market, couples use industry directories — Arabia Weddings, international B2C publications, and recently WIMforPRO — as an intermediate point of trust between a referral and the first direct contact. And more and more frequently, they use ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for pre-research: LLMs, by nature, cite structured sources (directories, precisely) far more than corporate websites, no matter how beautiful they are.

Practical consequence: whoever is not listed on directories is quite literally not found by the generation of tools that now handles a growing share of pre-searches. This is not about abandoning your website. It is about not relying solely on your website for a task that is now distributed across a system of channels.

Everything else

In the webinar, Samar also spoke about: why Dubai is a case apart (and why treating it as "the largest city in the Gulf" is the first commercial mistake); what Arab couples really look for in Italian venues (grandeur and absolute privacy, not cozy intimacy); how extended decision-making works (the couple is almost never the sole decision-maker); what Halal exactly means (and why "pork-free" is not enough); how to manage a women-only wedding; when the DJ should be brought from abroad and when not; how to build an Italian night on the pre-wedding evening; and why "no" is never an acceptable first response.

The complete webinar, the full in-depth article, the operational checklist, and the three pillar marketing articles that serve as the theoretical framework (Concepts, Tools, Process) are available on WIMforPRO, in the Insights Plus section.

The next appointment for the international markets webinars is Wednesday, July 8, dedicated to the Indian market. The following one, Tuesday, July 21, to the Russian-speaking area. To participate, you simply need to be registered on WIMforPRO.

Now we know how to speak to the Gulf. It's up to us to do it.