Dubai welcomed 4.7 million international overnight tourists from January-March 2018.
The figures were posted by Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism).
His Excellency Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General, Dubai Tourism, said: “The first quarter of the year has yielded stable performance supporting strong growth for all adjacent sectors like hotels and airlines. We expect to build on this strong base of 4.7 million visitors, to accelerate momentum through the summer and beyond – on the back of our strategic investments, partnerships, and policy enablers that are geared to collectively drive strong growth in 2018.
“With a number of major new attractions and leisure destinations having recently come on line and due to open later in the year, the breadth and depth of Dubai’s tourism proposition continues to expand and evolve, increasing our city’s attractiveness among the target visitor segments across all our key markets and segments. Our investments are prudently prioritised to ensure we create the most effective amplification of our appeal to both first-time and repeat audiences, as well as deliver the most efficient conversion outcomes across our diversified base.
“Through our growing networks across the digital, social and mobile-led marketing channels, we expect to further our outreach and advocacy organically as a strong complement to our annual programme of global integrated campaigns. As we move forward, the steadfast support we receive from our government, public and private sector partners is invaluable, and together we can look forward to delivering our Tourism Vision target of welcoming 20 million annual visitors by 2020.”
At the end of March 2018, Dubai’s growing hotel room inventory stood at 108,807 spread across 689 hotel and hotel apartment establishments, representing year-on-year increases of 4 and 1% respectively.
Occupied room nights also rose compared to the end of Q1 2017, totalling 8.27 million versus 7.96 million, while the average occupancy rate across all hotel and hotel apartment categories stood at an impressive 87%.
These figures indicate that the city continues to present a hugely attractive investment opportunity for hoteliers and developers, with the sector successfully balancing demand and capacity to produce positive results.
