AT this year’s ITB Berlin, Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) will be putting the spotlight on the emirate’s “first steps” towards achieving its goal of attracting 20 million visitors by 2020, the year in which it will host the World Expo.
The DTCM will also be promoting the emirate as a destination of choice for extended holidays, director general Helal Saeed Almarri tells TTN, while revealing how the organisation is working towards positioning Dubai as a leading tourism destination and commercial hub.
Excerpts from the interview...
What were the highlights of ITB Berlin for you last year? What do you expect to achieve at ITB Berlin this year?
At ITB Berlin last year we announced our visitor numbers for 2012. This was a landmark year for us as we crossed the 10 million visitors per year figure for the first time and two months later, in May 2013, we announced our Tourism Vision for 2020, which includes the headline target of welcoming 20 million visitors per year by 2020.
At the 2014 edition of ITB Berlin we will provide an insight into the success of the first steps on the journey to delivering this vision, announcing our visitor numbers for 2013. While I can’t give details until this announcement, I can say that it has been a very positive year with regards to visitor numbers.
We will also be highlighting our diverse destination offering with a number of hotels and attractions joining us on our stand. And we will be providing an insight into how residents experience the city, by exhibiting some of the contributions made to the #MyDubai initiative, which is a year- long initiative to create a multi-media autobiography of the city and show the everyday lives of residents.
Can you share some interesting statistics for the past one year?
I can’t give full details of the past year in terms of visitor numbers but during the first nine months of 2013, guest numbers across all hotel establishments – hotels and hotel apartments – reached 7,941,118, a 9.8 per cent increase year-on-year.
Hotel room occupancy averaged 78.6 per cent over the nine-month period, up 3.1 per cent compared to the same period in 2012 and hotel apartment occupancy also saw steady growth, up 7.3 per cent to 81 per cent, compared with 75.5 per cent in the first nine months of 2012.
Increasing length of stay has been identified as a key driver of tourism growth within the Tourism Vision for 2020 and these results were also positive with the average length of stay across hotels and hotel apartments between January and September rising 3.5 per cent year-on-year to 3.9 days.
Hoteliers and hotel apartment operators experienced significant growth in revenues, with total revenues for the first nine months of the year up by 17.1 per cent, reaching Dh15.33 billion ($4.1 billion). Total guest nights also recorded similarly impressive rises, up 13.7 per cent to 30,874,916 from 27,163,974 in the first nine months of 2012.
Saudi Arabia, India, the UK, US, Russia, Kuwait, Germany, Oman, China and Iran made up the top ten source markets for January to September 2013, mostly unchanged compared to 2012.
Consistently Dubai’s primary source market, Saudi Arabia experienced the most growth once again, with visitor numbers increasing by 24.8 per cent to 1,052,353. Ranked second, India continued to show strong increases in visitor numbers with visitors up by 15 per cent.
Other markets that experienced strong growth include Australia, which saw a 34.9 per cent from 144,121 for the first nine months of 2012 to 194,448 for the same period of this year, and China, which had an 11 per cent from 181,180 to 201,036.
What are the major travel trends for this year?
Dubai is a hub between the East and the West, and is a natural gateway to emerging markets and one of the main trends we will be able to capitalise on is the continual emergence of a new generation of first-time global travellers from these markets and growth economies. We hope these travellers will see Dubai as their destination of choice and will work to ensure they do.
In terms of business tourism, one trend we see is that once business travel starts from a part of the world, leisure tourists soon follow – we have seen this with Africa in the last few years.
Dubai is a major business tourism destination for African businesses and now we are seeing increased leisure visitors from African countries. Another trend will be business visitors becoming repeat leisure visitors with Dubai offering the perfect blend of business and leisure activities – once a business person visitors Dubai once for business, he or she will want to return for a leisure holiday.
I also think that although Dubai will continue to have a unique luxury offering, we will see more families and budget travellers visiting Dubai.
For DTCM, the aim is to ensure we offer a range of hotels, events and attractions that appeal to these various demographics and to see Dubai transform from being largely seen as a short-break destination to a destination of choice for an extended holiday.
By Rashi Sen