The UAE will be adding almost 27,000 new hotel rooms to its hospitality offer by 2030, two thirds of those being planned just in Dubai, according to the latest hospitality market review from real estate consultancy Knight Frank.
The report reveals that the country’s 221,580 existing hotel rooms will be supplemented by another 26,832 rooms, bringing the total in 2030 to 238,412, enough to accomodate the 40 million tourists the country aims to attract. The majority of the rooms will be in luxury, upper upscale and upscale accommodation, while only 4% of the total will be in economy options, a slight decrease from the current 5%. One quarter of the rooms will be in midscale and economy establishments, with 15% and 11% respectively.
From the new supply, 17,748 are foreseen just for Dubai, bringing the current 151,417 rooms to a total of 169,165 by 2030. Although the consultancy rates the level of comfort differently for Dubai, 5-star hotels greatly overtake any other type of development, with 60% of the new rooms being in this accommodation type, bringing the 2030 rate to 37%. Otherwise, 4-star hotels, 1-3-star hotels, luxury aparthotels and aparthotels will represent 28%, 18%, 9% and 8% respectively of the 2030 stock.
“In terms of the number of hotels, there’s a lot of potential for us to grow, but it is also making sure that we’re going to the right locations, because now we have different destinations within the city of Dubai, and also cater to different budgets”, the CEO of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DCTCM), Issam Kazim, told Gulf News. “Today, we know that there are amazing three-star hotels as well that can compete with many five-star properties around the world.”
The increasing tourism success of the UAE, and Dubai especially, is also shown by the growing number of passengers at Dubai International Airport (DBX). With 44.9 million passengers passing through it in the first half of the year, the airport was initially forecasting a total of 91.8 million for the entire 2024, but had now revised the estimate upwards, to 93 million.
“We are ahead of schedule”, said Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths. “We had a very strong first half this year. We’re hoping to get to 93 million by the end of the year and 100 million a couple of years away. Every time we revise our forecast, it’s always in the upward direction, so that’s a very positive trajectory.”
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.
