Dubai’s three-pronged approach to reach the 20 million international visitor mark by 2020 is based on a three-pronged strategy and India remains integral to its plans, suggests DTCM’s latest insight on trends and opportunities in tourism. Excerpts:
CEO, DTCM
India continues to dominate Dubai’s inbound traffic, accounting for over 1.2 million tourist arrivals in the first seven months of 2018, a report by Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) mentions. The Indian market has grown by over two per cent y-o-y – which may sound measly but is significant because of the sheer numbers. Furthermore, Dubai clocked 9.25 million international overnight tourists during the first seven months of 2018, representing a consistent increase in the same period last year.
The emirate was the fourth most visited city in the world with international overnight traffic reaching 15.8 million in 2017.
Much of this consistent growth from Indian shores is attributed to the seamless connectivity to Dubai and beyond, the report suggests. As many as seven airlines currently provide 556 flights per week to top cities in India. Add to this, a favourable visa regime and the visa on arrival facility for Indian passport holders have aided this development. With an eye on attracting the family traffic from Indian cities, the UAE cabinet has also recently announced the exemption of visa to children below the age of 18 from July 15th to September 15th of each year.
Future goals: Targeted campaigns to drive longer stays, repeat visitation
The report notes that the road ahead for DTCM is going to be a continued communication of the city’s evolution to the Indian audience, marketing a new side waiting to be discovered by the discerning tourist. “We are investing in a more customized understanding of the requirements of our core segments in India to tailor our messages as per our target audience,” the report reads. It emphasizes that the undertaking would enable the city to attract repeat visitations and longer stays.
Trends in cruise Tourism
With the arrival of luxury cruise ship Seabourn Encore, the Dubai’s cruise industry witnessed a stellar performance in the last season, the report mentions. Buoyed by the development, Dubai Tourism expects to be achieving its goal of catering to one million cruise tourists by the 2020-2021 season, it further adds.
Dubai’s Tourism Vision for 2020
Dubai plans to move into the next decade with a three-pronged strategy of maintaining the market share in existing markets, increasing market share in markets identified as high growth potential areas, such as India, and increasing the number of repeat visits. ‘DTCM will harness the collective power of key stakeholders, both in the public and private sectors in Dubai and abroad and will focus on three key objectives,’ the report substantiates.
Elaborating on the ‘Dubai’s Tourism Vision’ for 2020, it notes that the undertaking is a strategic roadmap with the key objective of attracting 20 million visitors per year by 2020.
