Europeans showing stronger interest in Dubai

Dubai is working its way to maintain its long-held status of a front-runner destination in the established and emerging outbound markets in Europe whose interest in the emirate as an ideal year-round business and leisure destination has been recording year-on-year stronger growth.

The phenomenal performance of Dubai’s rapidly-expanding tourism industry has been largely attributed to its mixture of aggressive overseas promotional and marketing initiatives and enlarged print and broadcast media exposure by the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) and inspiring public-private sector partnership.

Dubai is under constant global spotlight as the ambitious multi-million dollar infrastructure projects are set to make the destination bigger and better.

The impressive growth recorded by Dubai in its traditional and promising source markets, the current market trends, future growth projections and strategies are being reviewed and evaluated at the ongoing annual gathering of senior officials of the DTCM’s Overseas Representation (OR) offices. 

The participants conveyed their strong opinions about the need to continue the hard-sell campaigns as Dubai gains a new global standing as an ideal year-round, all-appealing business and leisure destination.

The DTCM Director Operations and Marketing, Mr. Mohammed Khamis bin Hareb, said: “The department has given its efforts a big momentum to match the expectations and achieve the ambitious growth levels. We are working towards building stronger awareness about the destination and the unique infrastructure that has put the emirate among the big-league destinations.”

Europeans accounted for substantial percentage of the Dubai hotel establishment guests, which, in the year 2003, was nearly five million, a five per cent growth over the previous year.

In the first half of 2004, the European guests continued their stronger share in the market comprising of 372 hotel and hotel apartments.

Year-round business and leisure travel to Dubai is growing constantly from the UK and Ireland. In the first half of 2004, the UK guests recorded 28.7% growth while it was 94.8% was the Irish guests.

German passengers passing through the Dubai International Airport recorded a 16.1% increase in 2003 compared with the previous year. The first half of 2004 registered a 67% increase in German hotel guests, while their total room nights rose by 10 %.

Dubai hotel establishment guests from France recorded 6.8 % increase in 2003, while the first half of 2004 witnessed 28.6 % increase compared with the corresponding period last year.

The number of Italian guests registered impressive growth of 16.3% in 2003 while it was 44.4% increase in the first half of 2004.

The Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland contributed 8.1% more guests to Dubai hotel establishments in 2003.

The first half of 2004 registered 39.2% increase in Swedish guests, followed by Norway with 32.3%, Denmark 24.5% and Finland 30.5%.