DTCM’s drive to attract 1.4m visitors from Britain and Ireland
The Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) is targeting to attract 1.4 million visitors from the highly-promising UK and Ireland markets by the year 2010, up from the present nearly 700,000 tourists, according to Ian Scott, who took over as the new Director of DTCM's Representative Office for the UK and Ireland last month.
Last year, nearly 700,000 British guests stayed at Dubai’s rapidly-expanding hotels and hotel apartments, making the UK and Ireland the top source market for the emirate's booming tourism industry. At present, about 200 tour operators are featuring Dubai in the holiday packages in this prime European market.
The DTCM Director-General, Khalid A bin Sulayem, said: “The UK has remained the top source market for Dubai’s fast-expanding, high-performing tourism industry. This year's edition of WTM will be utilised to further consolidate our position in the world market, especially the European countries which has been significantly contributing to the increased number of visitors of the emirate each passing year."
The department, he said, will continue its aggressive promotional and marketing agenda in the UK in addition to tapping emerging markets. The WTM, he said, provides an ideal platform to reach out to the world to promote Dubai as the world's leading tourism and business hub.
In the first half of 2007, Dubai hotel establishments played a host to 356,259 guests from the UK market, up by seven per cent compared with the corresponding period last year.
In the first quarter of 2006, about 334,000 guests from the UK stayed at Dubai hotels, while the number of guests in the second quarter was 158,260 and 190,321 in the third quarter and 164,000 guests in the last quarter.
The growth in the number of guests from the UK to Dubai has been consistently strong. From 106,706 guests in 1996, the numbers went up to 348,477 in the year 2001 and 687,138 in the year 2006.
