Dubai welcomes record 14.2 million overnight visitors in 2015

Dubai attracted over 14.2 million overnight visitors in 2015, recording a strong 7.5% increase over 2014 – double the United Nations World Travel Organisation’s (UNWTO) projected 3-4% global travel growth for the same period, annual figures released by Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) showed.

The emirate’s tourism sector once again proved the tenacity and strength of its economic contribution, as it made steady progress towards the target of 20 million visitors per year by 2020, despite a year afflicted by macro-economic uncertainties, and amidst a particularly turbulent geo-political climate during the second half of 2015 internationally.

Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General, Dubai Tourism, said: “Last year was a very strong year for Dubai’s travel sector, achieving double the global industry growth levels and our international visitation hitting 14.2 million, which firmly positions us as the fourth most visited city in the world. 2015 was volatile for travel globally, as we have all witnessed a range of disruptive factors, ranging from slackening economic growth in Asian and European markets to currency fluctuations across the world.

”Yet if Dubai is to hit its 20 million visitors per year target in the next five years, we must deliver a threshold 7-8% annual growth consistently, which has put even greater emphasis on strong sector-wide collaboration.

“Our performance over the past 12 months is undeniably reflective of the resilience of our diversified market strategy, our unified industry-level responsiveness, and ultimately the sustained strength of Dubai’s proposition.”

Through the pursuit of a multi-geography visitation mix strategy, Dubai furthered the performance achieved in the first half of the year to deliver strong growth across key feeder regions, mitigating the downward trends in specific countries.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) remained the regional foothold, supporting continued demand from near-markets to Dubai, consequently delivering the highest share of visitor volumes for 2015, with a total of 3.3 million, up 12.8% over 2014.

In terms of country-specific volumes from the GCC, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remained the lead market, contributing 1.54 million visitors, followed by Oman accounting for over 1 million travellers. Kuwait and Qatar were also among the top 20 markets, with the former the only one to register a decline in growth versus 2014 yet retaining its top 10 position, and the latter recovering strongly from mid-year with a high 32% year-on-year increase for the full year of 2015.