Sharjah sees 15% drop in occupancy rates

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UPBEAT MESSAGE: Sharjah's tourism chief remains positive despite a 15 percent drop in occupancy rates in January. (Getty Images)

Sharjah has witnessed a decline in its tourism sector, with hotel occupancy rates falling by 15 percent in January, compared to the same period in 2008.

Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed Al Qassimi, chairman of the Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority (SCTDA) said that the impact of the global economic crisis on Sharjah's tourism sector since the beginning of the year has been "slight".

In a statement made on the sidelines of the SCTDA's participation in the International Tourism Bourse (ITB) in Berlin, Qassimi added: "The declining demand for Sharjah's hotels is normal, and we are doing our best to stimulate the hotel sector in order to achieve the expected growth this year, a growth that will be positively reflected in the tourism sector in the emirate."

He added: "This year has seen a decline in the emirate's hotel rates as a result of the ongoing global economic crisis.

"The decline is normal, as there has been an urgent need to correct the unreasonable 50-200 percent increase in hotel rates seen in the last three years in order to deal with the crisis in a more pragmatic way."

Qassimi said: "The SCTDA's recently finalised promotional strategy for 2009 includes a number of necessary tools to support the tourism sector in the emirate amidst the economic crisis and worldwide challenges, and such planning will ensure continuous tourist inflow into the emirate and unsuspended development activities on the various tourist facilities projects."

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READERS' COMMENTS

herritating instead of easing!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by saif soud, sharjah, uae on Friday 20 March 2009 at 22:18 UAE time


iam an hotelier for last 7 years but first time i face a real crisis!
hotel business in sinking deep and deep in dubai and sharjah. but i don't find any positive approch to soleve the crisis from any department unfortunetly in this hard time we got very hard instruction and fine from different department for different new reasons, and where we use fastest I T system we got our staff getting horrible time in front office by an reporting system . but we hope everything will get fine very soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sharjah Hotel Occupancy
Posted by M.Iqbal, Sharjah, UAE on Wednesday 18 March 2009 at 03:59 UAE time


I am a hotelier in Sharjah ,the decline in occupancy is more than 35% ,we have not increased the prices and in no way able to reduce it ,the reason ,increase in the rental of meter charges for electricity and water ,we were paying monthly AED 335 as meter rent which went to more than 9000.
Increase in the muncipality Tax ,no support from SCTDA ,increase in rental or case in court ( pay to the lawyers).
No involvement of the hotels or hotel's apartment in formulizing any cultural or events in Shrajah.
Immigration for Transit and Tourist Visa is so strict that we even holding Immigration Card are forced to open visa from Dubai,as 20% applications are rejected without any comments and we have to bear the visa charges and cost.
Before we were paying AED 100+ 20 or Tourist for Transit Visa and now we are paying AED 300+20.
One of the bigger Hotel of Sharjah has announced the closer and converting its room into Studio Apartments.
Sharjah is for families and we should work more to attract families from India and Pakistan for tourism .
Malaysia has announced Visa on arrival for Pakistanis and Thailand is abolishing the Visa Fees.
This can be done in UAE ,to attract more tourist .
Before one can travel from one end to the other end in Sharjah by Taxi for AED 10 ,now the meter Taxi charges AED 3 and it will cost you AED 50 to go on the same route.
As i said we cannot reduce ,so we will go bust .

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