The total number of hotel guests to Abu Dhabi in H1 2015, increased 17% on the previous year, with a total 1.98million, generating more than 5.7m room nights across 163 hotel and hotel apartments.
The figures, released by Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi), also show an average stay of 2.89 nights.
Total revenue for hotel establishments recorded an 8% increase to $ 911 million, room revenue increased by 11%, food and beverage revenue increased by 1%, while other revenues – which includes services such as venue hire and business events – rose 22% to $ 110 million.
“We set ourselves a challenging guest arrivals target of 3.9 million hotel guests for this year, which we are very confident of achieving, especially given that our highly impressive half-year figures show double digit growth,” said Jasem Al Darmaki, Acting Director General, TCA Abu Dhabi.
“We remain committed to actively improve the average length of stay of our guests which has fallen by 5% over the comparable period in 2014. We have a series of high-profile events coming up to entice our guests to spend more time here including our new extended 2015/16 season of Abu Dhabi Classics, the annual F1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and Abu Dhabi Art, and anticipate the traditionally strong second half of the year performance will pull average length of stay back up closer to three nights.”
Domestic tourism from within the UAE which accounts for a third of all guest arrivals has shown impressive year-on-year growth of 14%, with a stellar performance from the Western Region’s 10 hotels recording a 48% year-on-year increase and a rise of 103% in its June arrivals. Hotspots such as the dedicated nature reserve of Sir Bani Yas Island – winner of the world’s leading sustainable tourism destination accolade at the 2014 World Travel Awards – remain popular choices for domestic tourism guests.
Guest stats
127,312 – India, with an increase of 18%, spending an average 3.71 nights each, well above the overall average of 2.89 nights.
72% YoY rise in Chinese guests totaling 102,217 guest arrivals and 148,842 guest nights. However, their length of stay dropped by 18% to 1.46 nights.
63,855 guest arrivals from the Philippines, recording a 24% rise
India is closely followed by the UK, China, Germany and the United States as largest overseas markets,
Other counties in the top ten include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan.
Russian guests showed the largest drop, by 10%, to 14,453 guest arrivals, attributable to difficult economic conditions in their home country.
