A record 44.9 million passengers passed through Dubai International Airport (DBX) in the first six months of the year, an 8% increase compared to the same period last year, reflecting the continuously growing tourism industry in the emirate.
Dubai attracted 9.31 million international visitors in H1 2024, reflecting its increasing appeal as a global hub for talent, enterprises and investors. These figures, recently released by Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, tie in closely with the growth of Dubai’s GDP, which reached AED 115 billion (€28.7 billion) in Q1 2024, up 3.2% from the previous year.
The size and significance of DXB’s established and growing markets including South Asia, Western Europe, the Gulf states and East Asia has played a crucial role in the airport’s success. In the first half of 2024, India remained the airport’s top destination country with 6.1 million passengers, while traffic from China exceeded 1 million passengers, representing an 80% year-on-year growth and a 90% recovery compared to 2019 levels.
“Strong demand from key source markets such as India and the gradual but certain resurgence of markets such as China, have been instrumental in our success”, commented Paul Griffin, the CEO of Dubai Airports, the company managing DBX as well as the Dubai World Central airport (DWC). “We have a very optimistic outlook for the remainder of the year, and we are on track to break records with 91.8 million annual guests forecasted for 2024.”
After India, the airport’s top destination countries are Saudi Arabia, with 3.7 million travellers, the United Kingdom, with 2.9 million, and Pakistan, with 2.3 million. Other significant markets include the United States (1.7 million), Russia (1.3 million) and Germany (1.3 million). The top three city destinations were London, with 1.8 million passengers, Riyadh (1.6 million) and Mumbai (1.2 million).
With 269 destinations across 106 countries, 216,000 aircraft movements were made at DBX in H1 2024, a 7.2% increase compared to the first six months of last year. Additionally, a record number of 39.7 million bags was handled by the airport in the first half of the year, marking a 6.7% year-on-year increase.
Part of a plan to enhance guest experience, new developments will be rolled out in the coming months. These include colour-coded car parks for easier navigation, a new signature aroma in Al Majlis to create a welcoming atmosphere befitting the VIP facility, and an advanced queue management system. The latter helps the airport anticipate and prevent queues from building up across touchpoints, ensuring a smoother and more efficient journey for passengers.
During H1, 98% of guests experienced less than 10 minutes of wait times at departure passport control, the airport said in a statement, and the same percentage waited less than 15 minutes at arrivals passport control. Moreover, 95% of guests at departure security screening waited less than 3 minutes.
Currently the second busiest airport in the world, all of its traffic will soon be moved to the nearby Al Maktoum International Airport once its $35 billion expansion is complete. Opened in 2010 with just one terminal, and until now mostly serving cargo and private flights and sitting about 45 kilometres from DBX, once the project is complete, Al Maktoum should have the capacity to handle 260 million flyers per year, more than double of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which, with almost 105 million passengers in 2023, is the busiest in the world.
