Dubai, UAE -Dubai welcomed 11.4 million international overnight visitors in the first nine months of 2022, a year-on-year increase of 134 percent, making the city one of the world’s most visited destination, a report of Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism revealed on Thursday.
The 11.4 million international overnight visitors who arrived in the city between January and October 2022 represented a quantum leap over the 4.88 million visitors that the city welcomed for the same period in 2021.
The numbers are close to the pre-pandemic record of 13.50 million international visitors in the first ten months of 2019. Dubai’s international tourism arrivals significantly outperformed other major global destinations, giving Dubai a headstart on post-pandemic recovery.
Average hotel occupancy in Dubai between January-October 2022 stood at 71 percent, one of the highest hotel occupancies in the world. This compares to 64 percent in the corresponding period of last year and just short of the 74 percent during the pre-pandemic period of 2019.
Dubai’s occupancy continues to closely trail the top benchmark cities: Istanbul (75 percent), New York (74 percent), Paris (73 percent), London (73 percent) and Los Angeles (72 percent).
Dubai’s hotel inventory in October 2022 comprised 144,737 rooms at 790 hotel establishments compared with 122,185 rooms available at the end of October 2019 across 724 establishments. The total number of hotels in the first ten months of 2022 saw an 8 percent growth over the same period in 2021. .
The hotel sector outperformed pre-pandemic levels across all other key measurements: Occupied Room Nights, Average Daily Rate (ADR) and Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR).
Despite the significant 18 percent increase in supply compared with pre-pandemic levels, Dubai hotels achieved strong growth across ADR and REVPAR over 2019 levels.
Dubai hotel establishments delivered a combined 30.40 million occupied room nights during the first ten months of the year, a 23 percent YTD growth and a 17 percent increase over the corresponding pre-pandemic period of 2019, which yielded 26.01 million occupied room nights.
UAE Tourism Strategy 2031 seeks to attract AED100 billion in additional tourism investments and 40 million hotel guests by 2031.