The Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi) said today that more than 1.4m guests stayed in Abu Dhabi hotels in January-May 2014, a 30 per cent increase on January to May 2013.
Hotel occupancy in the emirate in the period was 78 per cent, eight percentage points higher than in the equivalent period last year.
“The January-May guest tally translated into 4,375,395 guest nights which was up 22 per cent year-on-year,” the TCA Abu Dhabi said in a statement. Hotel revenues rose 14 per cent year-on-year in January-May 2014 to AED 2,675bn ($728.6m ).
Food and beverage income rose 12 per cent to just over AED1 billion ($278m). The average-length-of-stay fell 6 per cent to just over three nights while the average room rate fell 4 per cent to AED448 ($122).
“Overall, the performance makes for good reading though there are two areas of concern – the average-length-of-stay and the average room rate, both of which have dipped on 2013,” Deputy Director General of the TCA Abu Dhabi Jasem al-Darmaki said.
Abu Dhabi has 155 hotels and hotel apartments, TCA Abu Dhabi said.
TCA Abu Dhabi said India is now the top performing international market for the emirate. Almost 90,000 guests from India checked into Abu Dhabi hotels in January-May. About 86,000 visitors were recorded from the UK and almost 60,000 came from Germany. Al-Darmaki said that Abu Dhabi is working to attract more visitors from China.
“We are poised to achieve our 2014 guest arrivals target of 3.2m and anticipate increased business from Australia and Italy with Etihad Airways’ planned launch, this July, of new routes from Perth and Rome,” Al-Darmaki said. Edmund O’Sullivan is Chairman of MEED Events. Tel: 00 97150 559 2217