Dubai News Report– Dubai witnessed an increase of 0.8 percent visitors in 2018 as compared to corresponding year as 15.92 million visitors touched the port city.
India retained its spot as the top source market with more than 2 million travellers, official figures show.
Saudi Arabia appeared to the second-biggest country of origin for visitors with 3 percent increase in number of travelers to 1.6 million from 2017, Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing said Sunday.
The UK also held on to its third spot as a source market, but the number of visitors dipped 5.5 per cent to 1.2 million.
China climbed to fourth spot, with tourist numbers surging 12 percent to 857,000, while Russia rose two places to sixth position with a 28 per cent uptick in the number of travellers to 678,000.
The number of German tourists rose 12 percent to 567,000.
“Our strategic investments, innovative destination promotion programmes, responsive federal policy reforms and long-term global partnerships – all backed by the tremendous support of our stakeholders across the government and private sector, continue to yield strong results,” said Helal Almarri, director general of Dubai Tourism.
Dubai and the UAE overall have been implementing measures to boost tourism to the country, including granting the Russians and Chinese visas on arrival, moves that have helped boost visitor numbers from the respective countries.
Dubai has been beefing up its roster of events and developing new attractions to woo visitors. The emirate has marketed itself as a family-friendly destination with theme parks including Marvel-inspired IMG World of Adventures and Dubai Parks and Resorts.
The official data further shows that the number of hotel rooms and apartments rose 8 percent to about 116,000 across 716 establishments, with average occupancy reaching 76 percent
Luxury hotels accounted for a third of total room occupancy in Dubai, followed by four-star hotels with a quarter share and one to three-star with a fifth of all rooms.
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