By: Mahmoud Gamal
Abu Dhabi – Mubasher: Abu Dhabi’s hotels have seen a 4.4% year-on-year occupancy increase, registering historic records, during the period between January to November 2018, according to Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT Abu Dhabi).
The GCC emirate’s hotel occupancy is expected to increase over the coming period alongside with opening new projects and tourism destinations.
Over the course of the previous year, Indians topped hotel guests in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital and biggest sheikhdom, followed by US and Chinese nationals, DCT Abu Dhabi noted.
Hotel guest numbers at the emirate’s 168 hotels reached 4.57 million in the January-November period of 2018, compared to 4.378 million in the same period in 2017.
Indian tourists
The number of Indian guests in Abu Dhabi hotels went up 16.8% to 375,000 from January to November 2018, versus 321,000 in the prior year.
Chinese nationals came in second place with 366,000 visitors, 9.6% up from the previous year, followed by the UK and US visitors with 255,000 and 179,000, respectively.
Abu Dhabi hotels received around 3.017 million citizens in the 11-month period ended November 2018, up 4.5% from the prior year.
It is worth noting that Abu Dhabi welcomed more than 10 million visitors during the period between January and December 2018.
“[Abu Dhabi] worked hard to reinforce its position as a destination with remarkable global appeal and as a place destined to become a key cultural city of the future”, DCT Abu Dhabi said in a recent statement.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi, which opened its doors in November 2017, has been among the cultural highlights for visitors, along with the recently reopened Qasr Al Hosn site.
“We’re also looking forward in 2019 to hosting the biggest humanitarian event in history when we welcome the Special Olympics to Abu Dhabi,” Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman at DCT Abu Dhabi, commented.
Translated by: Kholoud Mohamed Hussein
