Dubai: Airlines, hotels, travel operators and other tourism-related businesses in the Middle East may be headed for more than billions in dirhams in losses as this week’s isolation of Qatar led to cancellations of flights.

Companies who have clients in Qatar, including financial services, law and corporate communications firms, have been hit by travel suspensions, as they scrambled to reschedule meetings and conferences at short notice.

The UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Maldives and Yemen have all severed ties with Qatar, resulting in the suspension of flights to and from the beleaguered Gulf nation that is heavily dependent on the global market.

The move is seen to have a huge blow to the Qatari economy, with food shortages and price hikes seen to unfold in the short term.

“Overall impact to the UAE economy due to the severed ties with Qatar is difficult to assess but direct impact to tourism industry until end of this year can reach up to Dh1 billion,” Nicola Kosutic, research manager at Euromonitor International told Gulf News.

Visitor numbers from Qatar account for just more than 1 per cent of total arrivals to UAE but, being big spenders, Qataris contribute 2 per cent of total tourism receipts. “[The hotel sector] will bear the highest burden with estimated revenue loss of Dh600 million, which represents 1.5 per cent of overall hotels’ value sales in UAE,” said Kosutic.

“Considering the high-spending power of Qatari travellers, they will be a sorely missed source of revenue in the short term,” a Euromonitor report stated.

Qatari visitors also account for 1 per cent of inbound arrivals to Egypt and Bahrain. In Saudi Arabia, the impact will be far greater, with Qatari travellers making 1.3 million trips a year to Saudi Arabia and spending $1 billion.

“Severing ties with Qatar will act as a drag on tourism spending, especially for Saudi Arabia,” Euromonitor said.

The Middle East is home to three major carriers, Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways that have embarked on aggressive expansion worldwide in the last 15 years. Among the big three airlines, Qatar Airways is the smallest, with a 2.6 per cent share of the aviation market in the Middle East in 2015.

“With flight bans in place and the exposure that the three Middle East carriers have to each other’s markets means that it is unlikely that there will be any winners in the short term,” said Euromonitor.

Travel agents in the UAE said they have so far cancelled most of their future bookings to Qatar, although they are awaiting further advisories from various governments.

“Companies who have offices around the GCC and use Dubai as their regional headquarters have been affected a lot by these flight cancellations. In addition to these, we also have financial institutions and law firms in particular who have weekly visits to Doha who have been most affected,” said Premjit Bangara of Sharaf Travel.

“We have successfully brought back most of our clients who were in Doha [on Monday] and the remaining will be rerouted via Muscat, as flights still operate between Muscat and Doha.”

Bangara said that leisure bookings have been significantly affected as well. “We have leisure bookings locked in for summer travel via Qatar and are certainly anxious as cancelling these bookings in the peak season would involve a great deal of inconvenience and cost due to rerouting the same passengers on other airlines with limited seat availability due to the summer rush.”