São Paulo – The Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism), United Arab Emirates, reported, this Wednesday (1), that the emirate received a record-setting 8.1 million tourists in 2018’s first half. The sector generated, in 2017, USD 29.6 billion (AED 109 billion) in revenues.
The top source countries for tourists to Dubai remain India, Saudi Arabia and United Kingdom, respectively, maintaining their positions from 2017’s first half. India, the top tourist source, surpassed the mark of 1 million tourists in the first half, up 3% in comparison to the previous year.
Saudi Arabia also registered an increase in the number of tourists and remains the top source country in the Gulf. The number of Chinese tourists has grown and ended the year’s first half in fourth place with 453,000 tourists. Russia was the source country with the sharpest hike in the numbers, 74% over the previous year with 405,000 tourists.
The number of both the Chinese and Russians have gone up since the UAE adopted the visa-on-arrival to both countries, in 2016 and 2017, respectively. The number of tourists from the United States and Germany arriving in Dubai also went up, with the countries remaining at the seventh and eighth positions, with 327,000 and 302,000 tourists, respectively.
Dubai Tourism’s Director General, Helal Saeed Almarri, told the Emirates News Agency (WAM), the UAE official news outlet, that 2018’s first half presented a steady performance, with a strong growth across our global source markets. “The varied offering of Dubai’s tourism proposition has steadily evolved, prudently yet actively responding to market demand, and increasing the emirate’s attractiveness among target visitor segments across our key markets,” he added.
From a regional perspective, Western Europe accounted for 21% of the total number of visitors, keeping the top spot among source regions. France, Italy and Germany had an increase of 18%, 11% and 12%, respectively, in number of visitors, which shows that Dubai’s marketing efforts to increase the number of European tourists are being effective.
“We remain dedicated to continuing to drive record numbers of visitors to Dubai, consequently increasing the tourism sector’s impact on the emirate’s economy,” said Almarri. Eyeing 2018’s second half and searching for additional areas of growth for the tourism sector, the recent initiative by the emirate of implementing the reimbursement of the value added tax (VAT) to tourists should also ensure the sector’s competitiveness and boost its contribution to the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Until the end of June 2018, Dubai had 111,317 hotel rooms among 700 hotels, an increase of 7% over the same period of last year. With the growing demand for mid-market hotels operating in Dubai, the number of four-star hotels went up, from 114 to 138. Occupied room nights have also grown year-over-year, with a total of 14.97 million in this year’s first half, against 14.53 million during the same period of 2017.
Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
