Dubai welcomes record 14.2 million overnight visitors in 2015

Additionally, the emirate’s mature business and consumer events industry continues to be a key economic contributor, with the delivery of a strong and regularly renewed annual calendar of global pillar events, core to the value-creation agenda for tourism. As a testament to the competitiveness of the city’s ever-evolving calendar, Dubai has earned the recognition of ‘World Festival and Event City’ for three consecutive years since 2012 by the International Festivals and Events Association. This will only be further accentuated by the growing Dubai Food Festival, the launch of Dubai Comedy Festival in 2015, a renewed Dubai Shopping Festival in its 21st edition in 2016, and the upcoming inaugural XYoga Dubai Festival this February.

Tourism-related infrastructure and capacity enhancement investment is expected to gain momentum in 2016 through more segment-specific offerings such as culture and heritage attractions and family-oriented theme parks, in addition to continued focus on enhancing the business environment that underscores Dubai’s pursuit of becoming the number one destination for travel, business and events. Dubai will be steadily implementing projects to develop, enhance and promote the core pillars of Dubai’s destination offering that in turn feed into the agenda to not just attract more volumes but to further the sector’s growing contribution to the emirate’s GDP, and be a source of sustainable competitiveness for future growth.

Almarri concluded: “Infrastructure, accommodation, air connectivity, access and policy enablers continue to be the facilitating levers that ensure Dubai remains price competitive, can deliver exceptional service quality that will not only attract first-time visitors, but ensure that they become Dubai loyalists and advocates longer-term. Today, the evolution of our product offering is a result of ensuring extremely tight collaboration with the hotel sector and the retail community, as well as the collective contribution of government and public and private enterprises, aimed at going beyond attracting tourists, to capturing the highest value we can from every visitor to Dubai, ensuring that tourism contribution to the economy is further amplified. These partnerships are crucial for us to build on the foundations we have laid, and accelerate the pace of growth in 2016, to ensure that the 2020 Vision is brought to life for Dubai.”