By: Mahmoud Gamal
Dubai – Mubasher: Chinese tourists visiting Dubai have increased during the first three months of 2019, according to Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).
The GCC emirate’s arrivals from China increased by 25% year-on-year in January, the highest rate compared to Dubai’s European and US visitors.
Up to 100,000 Chinese tourists visited Dubai during the three-month period ended in March, compared to 80,000 in the prior-year period.
Chinese arrivals came in the fourth place among Dubai’s top tourists in the January-March period of this year, the same ranking of the previous year.
Hotels in the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai have almost fully occupied in the first days of February, coinciding with the celebrations of the Chinese Lunar Year of the Pig, which began on 5 February.
Recent data showed that Chinese tourists grew 5% to 1.11 million in the UAE’s two biggest cities during 2018, compared to 1.06 million the year before.
Dubai welcomed up to 779,000 Chinese visitors over the course of 2018, up 12% from 696,000 in 2017, DTCM said.
In the same vein, the number of Chinese visitors is expected to be on the rise, coinciding with the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival, which begins as of February and continues until the middle of the same month.
It is worth noting that, Dubai’s bodies and authorities are continuously working on achieving the emirate’s vision of raising the numbers of inbound visitors to 20 million tourists, along with increasing the number of available hotel rooms to 140,000 by 2020.
A recent report by The Economist projected a rise in the number of Dubai’s economic sectors, including infrastructure, retail, and hotels, as the emirate approaches its widely-anticipated Expo 2020.
The six-month Expo 2020 Dubai, the first ever World Expo to take place in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region, will take place during the period between 20 October 2020 and 10 April 2021 and is expected to welcome more than 25 million visitors.
Translated by: Kholoud Mohamed Hussein
