When we last heard about the U.A.E. in the news it was something along the lines of their tourism and building industry grinding to a halt due to a lack of funds and the collapse of the world-wide economy. As one would expect, the slowing down of banking loans and the tightening of funds would obviously hamper any sort of development, especially for countries that are in the desert and need import both materials and workers to construct that lavish hotels and entertainment districts meant to entertain international visitors. This was a very bad situation and for weeks there were news articles and blog posts about how cities such as Dubai were full of abandoned and half-built husks of unfinished hotels and other buildings.
For those of you worried that this trend wasn't going to reverse and that tourism in that area of the Middle East would forever be tarnished, there's good news. Abu Dhabi has just released it's first quarterly report for the 2014 tourism year and there has been a huge jump in the number of visitors, both domestic and international. This is not only for the emirate itself, but for the region in general. It points to an upswing in the tourism industry which will bring in more money and more investments to the cities and emirates.
So far, there has been an increase of 32% when compared to the same time period last year. Not only is there an increase in the amount of tourists, but the number of available rooms increased from 24,416 to 26,811. This marks a roughly 10% increase in the amount of rooms and but the look of things, they will all be used. If this trend continues, the entire area might see a complete resurgence of both the tourism industry as well as the construction industry.
Where are all of these people coming from? A surprising amount is actually domestic tourism from the within the U.A.E. itself. In fact, there has been a 29% increase in domestic tourism to Abu Dhabi. India also contributes a surprisingly large amount of travelers to the tourism industry. There was actually a 39% increase in the number of Indian visitors to the country.
With hotel revenues increased by 11% and food and beverage by 11% compared to last year's first quarter, the sky is looking bright for the tourism industry and we may once again see the U.A.E. rise as the top tourist destination in the Middle East.
You can read more about this here: http://www.breakingtravelnews.com/news/article/abu-dhabi-records-sharp-increase-in-visitor-numbers-in-early-2014/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+breakingtravelnews+%28Breaking+Travel+News%29
