Dubai: A record total of 8.06 million international overnight tourists arrived in Dubai during the first six months of 2017, marking a 10.6 per cent increase over the same period last year, according to Dubai Tourism.
Figures released Sunday by Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) suggest that the emirate is on target to maintain its growth trajectory from January this year.
The growth in numbers points to the foundational strength and sustained acceleration of the emirate’s tourism sector, underscoring the expanding appeal of Dubai as a global tourism destination, Dubai Tourism said.
Almost all of Dubai’s top 20 inbound visitor source markets saw positive or near stable year-on-year performances in the first half of 2017, with five of the top 10 delivering double-digit growth.
India continued to top the list of traffic generators, for the first time crossing the 1 million mark over a six-month period with 1,051,000 Indians having visited the city between January and June, up 21 per cent over the same period last year.
Saudi Arabia and the UK retained their spots as the second and third largest source markets respectively, with the former rallying to stabilise in June despite facing economic challenges in 2017.
China and Russia topped the list for growth as source markets, delivering 55 per cent and 97 per cent respectively in the first six months of 2017. This was a direct results of recent regulatory changes granting citizens from China and Russia free visa-on-arrival access to the UAE.
The only poor performance was that of Oman. Despite being the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) second highest volume driver, Oman continued its negative slide through 2017, witnessing a sharp 30 per cent decline in tourism numbers.
“Our strategic investments, innovative destination promotion programmes, responsive federal policy reforms, and long-term global partnerships are evidently paying dividends as we ramp up efforts to increase Dubai’s accessibility, visibility and overall appeal, minimise barriers to travel, and ultimately drive both first-time and repeat visitation,” Helal Saeed Al Merri, Director General, Dubai Tourism, said in a statement.
Hotel supply
Dubai’s hotel room inventory, meanwhile, stood at 104,138 at the end of June 2017, up 5 per cent compared to the same time last year, across a total of 676 establishments, Average occupancy across all hotel and hotel apartment categories stood at 79 per cent, increasing 1 percentage point over the end of June 2016. And occupied room nights were also up year on year, totalling 14.53 million in the six-month period.
