Dubai hotels Q1 revenue hits record $4.3b

Dubai’s rapidly-expanding hotel industry has posted an all-time high of Dh16 billion ($4.35 billion) in revenues during the first quarter of 2012, marking an increase of 24% over last year’s figures.

Dubai hotels also showed a nine% increase in guest numbers (which crossed the nine million mark), 22% jump in guestnights and a 12 per cent rise in the average length of stay, according to figures released by the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).

In January 2012, Dubai ranked number one on the STR Global’s hotel occupancy list with 86.2% level, up from ninth place a year earlier, higher than in Tokyo, Paris or New York.

Announcing the results at Arabian Travel Market (ATM-2012), Khalid A bin Sulayem, DTCM director general, said: “ The remarkable results of our hospitality industry is the outcome of the substantial expansion of the tourist infrastructure, an increasingly impressive portfolio of tourism products, wider destination awareness, aggressive promotional and marketing drive and the growing air-connectivity to and from Dubai. The iconic Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF) also contributed enormously towards this feat.”

 “The overriding feature of this strikingly impressive performance has been our focus on quality standards and going beyond the expectations of the guests.”

 “Equally crucial has been the inspiring partnership between the government and private sectors to reach higher levels of growth. The new hotel classification scheme that has been put in place will go a long way in gaining more growth in the market which is seeing more rooms adding up to the inventory,” he added.

During January-March 2012, Dubai hotels and hotel apartments played host to nearly 2.6 million guests, an increase of nine per cent over the corresponding period last year.

Similarly, the guest nights swelled by 22% to touch 10.35 million, while the revenues recorded 24% increase to more than Dh5.38 billion.

The number of hotels increased by one% to reach 577 with the total number of rooms and flats swelling four% to 75,171.

Hotel room occupancy rate stood at 87%, an increase of eight% while it was 84% occupancy for the apartment flat, a five% increase.

However, the apartment average room rate witnessed 12% increase to reach Dh448 while the hotel average room rate was Dh655, an increase of seven%.

In terms of market performance, Saudi Arabia topped the Top 20 Source Market List with 272,631 guests, thereby consolidating Dubai’s position in the intra-Gulf tourism business landscape. India notched up second position with 207,774 guests followed by the UK and the US with 174,922 and 129,978 guests, respectively. Russia ranked fifth with 109,219 guests.

 The other top performers were Iran (106,352), Germany (99,065), Kuwait (70,399), China (66,926), Oman (65,779), Pakistan (62,234), France (48,347), Egypt (45,696), Qatar (40,804), Australia (36,307), Italy (32,477), Jordan (27,526), Netherlands (26,750), Philippines (26,509) and Lebanon (24,771).