Dubai to waive fees to grow budget hotel sector

Tourism chiefs in Dubai on Sunday announced plans to encourage more mid-market hotels to set up in the emirate, which is traditionally dominated by luxury offerings.

Helal Saeed Almarri, director general of the Dubai Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) has revealed that the hotel investment industry is to be given a financial incentive to develop more mid-range hotels in Dubai.

In his keynote speech to The Hotel Show in Dubai, he said three- and four-star hotel operators would be granted a concession on the standard 10 percent municipality fee, which is levied on the room rate for each night of occupancy.

The initiative is designed to encourage hotel owners to bring forward their construction timelines, creating more three and four star hotel rooms in Dubai more quickly, he said.

Investors in new hotels will be granted a waiver on the fee for a period of four years from the date the permit to construct is granted and provided that this date is between October 1 this year and December 31 2017.

Almarri said: "In order to achieve our headline objective of 20 million visitors per year by 2020, we need to both increase the overall stock of hotel rooms in Dubai and widen the range of options for visitors.

"In recent years the number of three and four star establishments has increased, but it's vital that we continue to engineer the growth of this range."