According to government data, Dubai experienced a 134% increase in overnight international visitors between January and October of this year, compared to the same time period in 2021.
Dubai’s economy and tourism department says that the emirate’s 10-month performance is 15 percent lower than the 13.5 million international visitors it hosted in the same period of 2019 prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, according to data.
Dubai aims to increase the tourism sector’s contribution to GDP to Dh450 billion ($122.5 billion) by 2031 by catering to 40 million hotel guests, up from 14.5 million in 2014.
Dubai recorded 1.4 million visits from India in the first 10 months of 2022, up 116 percent from the same time period last year.
Oman had 1.1 million visitors, Saudi Arabia had 993,000, and the UK had 832,000 visitors.
The increase in visitors from Russia was the highest at 76 percent, boosting overnight international visitors to 548,000.
Between January and October, visits from Israel rose 239 percent, putting it 14th on Dubai’s list of top 20 source countries, thanks to the Abraham Accords.
The GCC accounted for 22 percent of Dubai tourists, closely followed by Western Europe at 20 percent, South Asia at 17 percent, and the Middle East at 12 percent, based on regions.
Dubai’s hotels were kept busy during the year through October as tourist arrivals increased, with occupancy rising to 71.5 percent from 63.7 percent in the same period of 2021, but staying below the 73.8 percent occupancy levels over the first 10 months of 2019.
Despite the 18 percent increase in room inventory, occupancy in year-to-date October 2022 was only 2.4 percentage points less than pre-pandemic levels, the DET said.
Hotel performance metric, revenue per available room, reached Dh362 in the first 10 months of 2022, above the Dh245 in the same period last year and the Dh295 in January-October of 2019.
Image Credit: Duminda Perera on Unsplash
