Abu Dhabi posts visitor record as tourists flock to the capital

Abu Dhabi has posted its best quarter as a tourist destination.

In the year’s first quarter, the emirate greeted 834,771 visitors, a startling 32 per cent rise from a year earlier.

The greatest numbers of visitors were from within the UAE itself, followed by India.

But the strongest rate of growth was from China – and that growth is expected to surge again in the current quarter.

“This all makes for excellent reading, particularly when judged against the fact that the emirate’s accommodation inventory has grown significantly over the past year with a 10 per cent increase in room availability,” said Jasem Al Darmaki, the deputy director general of Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority.

The increase in available rooms meant that even though hotel occupancy rose in the quarter, average room rates were flat.

The average occupancy rate was 79 per cent, up 8 per cent, for a total of almost 2.6 million guest nights.

The average room rate was checked at Dh455, which compared favourably with the average in booming Dubai (Dh1,432, according to a report from TRI Hospitality Consulting).

The average length of hotel stays in Abu Dhabi emirate was 3.1 nights. Hotel revenues gained 11 per cent to Dh1.5 billion.

The emirate now has 152 hotels and hotel apartments, providing 26,811 rooms.

The quarter was busy in the meetings, exhibitions and business travel segment. In March, the four-day Gulf Incentive, Business Travel and Meetings Exhibition drew an estimated 2,400 trade visitors and 350 exhibitors.

Hilton Worldwide, which took over operations of the former Rocco Forte hotel in Abu Dhabi last year, is looking at other projects in the emirate.

“We are pleased to see the growth there, the trend is positive, and that is the most important thing,” said Christian Grage, vice president of operations for the Arabian Peninsula at Hilton Worldwide.

Of the emirate’s 834,771 tourists in the quarter, 30 per cent or 260,755 were from within the UAE, a year-on-year rise of 29 per cent. These guests had an average hotel stay of 2.31 nights.

India remained the leading overseas source of tourists. It provided 50,291 guests in the quarter, a 39 per cent increase, and they stayed around four nights.

Mr Al Darmaki said tourism from India should get a lift from Etihad Airways’ flights to the northern city of Jaipur, which began on April 2, and the emirate’s exposure through the Indian Premier League’s seventh-season matches held at the capital’s Zayed Cricket Stadium.

After India, the next big source markets were the United Kingdom and Germany. Tourists from Britain were up 25 per cent to 49,720 and stayed an average of 4.2 nights. Tourists from Germany rose 16 per cent to 36,921 and averaged 4.67 nights.

Arrivals from China showed the sharpest increase, shooting up 208 per cent during the first quarter with 32,259 visitors. But their typical stay was short, at 1.5 nights.

The performance of the Chinese market is expected to be better in the current quarter. That is because of the largest ever corporate group trip to the UAE, in which 14,500 resellers from the Chinese cosmetics company Nu Skin visited in April. Six-thousand of them populated 16 hotels in Abu Dhabi.

This month, TCA Abu Dhabi and nine partners including Etihad will visit the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Hong Kong to drum up business.

ssahoo@thenational.ae

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