November breaks records in Abu Dhabi tourism push

The third Abu Dhabi F1 race and its related events helped produce record tourist numbers for the UAE capital, according to figures released by Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA).

Last month, Abu Dhabi welcomed 206,748 hotel guests, a 22 percent increase on the corresponding month last year and the first time in two years that a calendar month has broken the 200,000 mark.

November's performance means that in the first 11 months of this year, the emirate's hotels and hotel apartments received 1,903,888 guests - a 16 percent rise on the year-to-date period in 2010.

Guest nights also rose 23 percent, ADTA said, jumping to 5,694,140 from the 4,640,893 figure hit last year.

Despite an eight percent decrease in average length of stay and small dips in room, food and beverage and other revenue contributors, Abu Dhabi's hotels' and hotel apartments' year-to-date revenue of AED3.96bn ($1.09bn) is four percent up on 2010 receipts.
The strong performance ensured Abu Dhabi entered December less than 97,000 guests away from achieving its stretch 2011 target of two million hotel guests.

"Without putting the horse before the cart, we are confident that we will surpass our stretch target for the year," said Lawrence Franklin, strategy & policy director, ADTA.

"We have already had hotels and hotel apartments report strong business over what was an historic National Day weekend and the expected influx for the end-of-year Volvo Ocean Race fleet should ensure December seals fantastic, across-the-board performance levels for the year," Lawrence added.

November's growth in the total number of guests and guest nights led to an occupancy rate of 77 percent - the same as November 2010 - despite an influx of new hotel properties to the Abu Dhabi market.

During November, GCC guest arrivals rose 47 percent on 2010 numbers with arrivals from Qatar growing 56 percent.

ADTA said the UK is still Abu Dhabi's top international source market with 15,246 Britons visited the emirate's hotels last month, an 11 percent rise on November 2010, while Germany remained the second-largest European source market.

"We anticipate even bigger demand in Germany following the recent launch of Etihad's four weekly services from Dusseldorf to Abu Dhabi and Air Berlin's plans to operate four flights a week between Berlin and Abu Dhabi International Airport from January," said Franklin.