Dubai sees 7% drop in UK visitors in Q109

Numbers of visitors to Dubai from the UK fell by seven percent in the first quarter of the year, according to new figures from the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) reported on Wednesday.

Just over 195,000 tourists arrived in Dubai from the UK and Ireland in the first four months of this year, down from 210,000 in the same period the previous year, according to UAE daily The National.  

The UK and Ireland market had grown by 13 percent last year to 900,000, said Ian Scott, the director of DTCM’s office in the UK and Ireland, said on the sidelines of the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai on Tuesday.

The seven percent drop was less than expected, and could be regained, he added.

“A lot of people were predicting that it would be a lot worse. The UK is by far the number one market, so we’re talking about big volumes,” Stone told the newspaper.

“I think that the UK is suffering a little bit now, but 7 per cent isn’t something that we can’t recover from,” he added.

The downturn in the UK economy and an unfavourable exchange rate with the dirham were the key factors that had driven down UK visitor numbers, Stone said.

DTCM figures for other groups of visitors to Dubai show that there was no change in the numbers of Iranians, the second largest tourist group, visiting the emirate in Q1 2009.

Dubai’s hotels and hotel apartments accommodated 7,531,299 guests last year, compared with 6,951,798 in 2007, according to figures from the DTCM.
Dubai is aiming to attract 15 million tourists a year by 2015

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