News

Samsung And Spotify Offer Free Premium Deal In MENA

Nearly seven in ten streams in the region come from 18-to-34-year-olds — the audience Samsung is hoping to entice into its ecosystem.

Published

1 month ago

August 7, 2026

Nour Nasir

Samsung

Samsung has announced a partnership with Spotify spanning the Middle East, North Africa, and Türkiye, bundling Spotify Premium with select devices across its ecosystem. The headline offer — up to four months of Premium for free — is a first for the region.

Customers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Türkiye who buy any OLED or 98-inch television, or any Galaxy S or Z series mobile device, get four months of Spotify Premium. The offer, tiered by market and device, is available at retail and on Samsung.com, and redeemed through the Samsung Promotion and Samsung Members apps.

For Samsung, the strategy is less about free music than about lock-in. The Korean tech giant’s pitch is continuity: a track starts on a Galaxy smartphone through Galaxy Buds on the commute, moves to a Samsung TV and soundbar in the living room, and stays controllable from a Galaxy Watch. The more seamlessly music travels between those devices, the harder it becomes to swap any one of them for a rival’s.

“Technology should bring people closer to the things they love, and few things connect people the way music does,” said Omar Saheb, Regional VP of Marketing and Online Business at Samsung Electronics MENA. The partnership, he added, gives customers “a genuine reason to choose Samsung for the experience, not only the product”.

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For subscribers, Premium brings the usual package: ad-free listening, offline downloads, richer audio quality on Galaxy Buds and Samsung sound devices, and Jam, which lets friends build a shared queue.

“At Spotify, we are always working to make every listening moment feel more personal, meaningful, and worth it,” said Rami Jamal, Head of Partnerships at Spotify for South Asia, Middle East, and Africa.

The demographics go a long way to explaining the strategy. Across MENA, Türkiye, and Pakistan, nearly seven in ten Spotify streams come from listeners aged 18 to 34, according to the company — precisely the audience Samsung wants inside its hardware ecosystem before buying habits harden.

News

Trip.com Is Betting An AI Agent Will Book Your Next Vacation

Abu Dhabi, Jazeera Airways and a run of hotel deals give the company more inventory. Its Mastercard demo says the most about where booking technology is headed.

Published

2 days ago

September 16, 2026

Nour Nasir

trip.com is betting an ai agent will book your next vacation

Most of what Trip.com Group announced at Arabian Travel Market 2026 this week reads like the standard expansion playbook of an online travel agency: a new agreement with a tourism board, a run of hotel partnerships, an airline deal. However, one item was considerably more interesting: a demonstration built with Mastercard of an AI agent that doesn’t just suggest trips but also pays for them.

trip.com tripgenie ai agent

The showcase put TripGenie, the company’s AI travel assistant, to work searching, selecting and completing purchases inside a single booking flow, with Mastercard’s Agent Suite for Merchants handling the payment step and Network International processing the transactions on the merchant side. It’s limited for now to attractions and ancillary services, but the partners plan a phased commercial rollout from early 2027.

“As traveller expectations change, technology and AI will play an increasingly important role in how people plan their journeys,” says Schubert Lou, CEO of Trip.com.

Meanwhile, in more conventional news, CEO Lou and Saleh Mohamed Al Geziry (Director General for Tourism at the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi), signed an agreement building on the two organizations’ existing partnership, with joint marketing and Abu Dhabi destination content to be pushed across Trip.com Group’s platforms.

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On accommodation, the group expanded its partnerships with JA Hotels & Resorts, Ishraq Hospitality and Aleph Hospitality and deepened its work with Silkhaus, which brings vacation homes into a portfolio that has so far leaned on hotels. Jazeera Airways signed a strategic partnership intended to widen the Kuwaiti carrier’s reach and encourage earlier bookings, tied to Kuwait’s own tourism ambitions.

The company moved into a larger Dubai office earlier this year and describes its long-term aim as a two-way ecosystem: sending Middle East travelers abroad while drawing international visitors in.