Dubai has emerged as one of the most popular tourist destination through launching ambitious developmental initiatives and high quality projects. The first half visitor number results, recently released by Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), recorded an increase across all key indicators, including hotel establishment guests, hotel and hotel apartment revenues, room occupancy and average length of stay.
More than 5.5 million tourists visited Dubai in the first half of 2013, representing an 11.1 per cent year-on-year increase, indicating that Dubai is on the way to achieving its Tourism Vision for 2020. Dubai’s Tourism Vision for 2020 aims to welcome 20 million visitors per year. Commenting on the results of the first half of 2013, Helal Saeed Almarri, Director-General of DTCM stated, “Our strategy is to position Dubai as a foremost destination for both leisure and business travellers by continuously evolving our broad and diverse tourism offering, and attracting visitors from a range of source markets, including targeting a new generation of first-time travellers from emerging markets. The increase in visitors from each of our key source markets is particularly encouraging, with a number of these markets showing particularly strong growth, including the GCC countries, China, India, Australia and many countries in Europe.”
Talking about the India market, Carl Vaz, Director ‐ DTCM India said, “India continues to be a top source market for inbound visitors into Dubai with the total number of Indian guests reaching 463,175 for the first six months of 2013, a growth of 15.8 per cent increase over the corresponding period January – June 2012. India comes under the top 5 source markets for DTCM. Dubai has always been a hot favourite with Indian middle class tourists, looking for a quick trip abroad on an affordable budget.”
Elaborating more on DTCM’s plan for the India market, Vaz added , “Moving forward for the year, one of our key focus areas is to tap the Indian wedding, family and luxury segments. Currently, the summer promotional campaign titled ‘Summer is Dubai’ is underway. Moreover, DTCM India has activated several joint marketing initiatives with leading travel and tour operators across the country to promote the campaign which comprises of offers and discounts for families.” As part of B2B contact engagement, DTCM has in place an online travel agents training program. Moreover, DTCM will also focus on niche segments such as student groups, senior citizens, sporting enthusiasts, heritage and culture enthusiasts, up-market leisure travelers and the lucrative wedding segment.
According to a latest report released by DTCM, the occupancy rate for hotel rooms and hotel apartments saw steady growth during the first half of the year. Hotel room occupancy averaged 84.6 per cent over the six month period, up 2.8 per cent from 81.8 per cent in the first half of 2012, while the occupancy rate for hotel apartments was 85.8 per cent, up 6.5 per cent from 79.3 per cent in H1 2012.
Dubai has 16 more hotel establishments than it had at the end of June 2012, bringing the total number to 603and adding 5,484 rooms to the Emirate’s offer, which now totals 81,492: a 7.2 per cent increase since the end of H1 2012. In the first six months of the year, the average length of stay across hotels and hotel apartments was 3.89 days – a rise on the average 3.82 day stay in H1 2012.
