Hotels cut room rates 'by up to 60%'

ROOMS VACANT: Dubai is keen to increase the number of tourists visiting during the summer. (Getty Images)

Dubai hotels have cut room rates by an average of 50 to 60 percent this summer, as the rising cost of air travel, global inflation and rising competition takes its toll on the sector.

Bilal Sayyed, general manager of travel group Destinations of the World, told the Gulf News newspaper on Thursday he believes hotel occupancy in the city may be down by as much as 15 to 20 percent this summer compared with the same period last year.

The Abu Dhabi market could have been hit harder as Dubai is the primary leisure destination during summer, he said.

Slumping tourist numbers are also likely to impact the country’s retail sector, which is banking on a sharp rise in visitor numbers over the next few years.

Indian travellers are especially price-sensitive and airlines have seen a lower seat factor on their UAE-India routes, industry sources told Gulf News.

It said Dubai had 452 hotels and apartments in 2007 and the number grew to 475 at the end of March this year, according to data from Dubai's Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).

Abu Dhabi aims to more than double the number of hotel rooms to 25,000 by 2015.

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READERS' COMMENTS

Visiting the UAE
Posted by Doug, Melbourne on Thursday 24 July 2008 at 15:48 UAE time

The UAE is rapidly pricing itself out of the leisure destination market. Quick weekend trips from neighboring countries, week-long trips from Europe and the States have become expensive, rapidly rising hotel charges and the 20% tax helped slow things down. I'm now paying twice what I paid only a couple of years ago for the same room in the same hotel. Now the new visa charge is going to discourage more people. Now add in the traffic and the tolls. Careful Dubai, you are rapidly becoming just another big city.

Hotels cut room rates 'by up to 60%'
Posted by Kenneth John, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Thursday 24 July 2008 at 11:09 UAE time


The UAE has slowly but surely been going in the direction of pricing itself out of the market as a tourist destination. GCC nationals have been complaining over the last 6 months at the costs of coming to Dubai, staying in the hotels and having to pay for everything that a tourist normally does when on vacation. Now we have recently also seen that you have to pay to walk along the beach in Abu Dhabi. It is time that the UAE wakes up and smells the coffee that they are indeed pricing themselves out of being an economical tourist destination. Cutting room rates could be the beginning of the end.

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