ADTA forecasts 5 million guests annually by 2021

The director general of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA) has forecast that Abu Dhabi will exceed five million guests annually a decade from now.

Commenting on Abu Dhabi’s future growth in light of imminent 40th UAE National Day celebrations on December 2, HE Mubarak Al Muhairi said he hoped to see a “destination that is recognised as world-class across a number of metrics” ahead of the 50th anniversary 10 years from now.

Currently, the ADTA director general said the emirate is on track to achieve its “stretch two million” visitor target by the year end.

From this point, he acknowledged that the growth rate would be faster than global estimations, but less than the growth rate achieved by Abu Dhabi historically.

Al Muhairi explained: “[2021 is] a long way ahead and as the past two years has shown globally, forecasting can be an inexact science — though at ADTA we appear to be rather good at it achieving our hotel guest targets year-on-year — though we do take a relatively conservative and measured approach to growth.

“But if I try to cast my vision ahead to the next 10 years, I hope to see a destination that is recognised as world-class across a number of metrics, namely events, infrastructure, service standards, private-public sector participation and in the preservation of culture and heritage.

“In terms of hotel guest growth, we are on course to this year to attain our stretch two million target with guests staying in some 20,800 available rooms. We foresee guest arrivals growing to our mid-term target of 3.2 million guests by 2015 end. Then we are looking towards an 8% annual average growth rate up to 2021 and beyond. This is twice the estimated global growth rate but significantly less than our double digit historical growth,” Al Muhairi continued.

“On this basis we forecast that in 2021 we may exceed 5 million guests annually which ties in nicely with 50 years of the UAE. If this scenario pans out, in 2021 we will have grown year-on-year by in excess of 400,000 guests.”

Al Muhairi concluded: “It also puts us on a sustainable, assuming a strong, but not impossible, growth trajectory of 10 million guests in the emirate by 2030.”

According to the Abu Dhabi 2030 Plan, the emirate’s goal is to evolve from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based one, and to boost the non-oil share of the economy to more than 60% of GDP, from just over 40% today.

Tourism is a major component of this plan.