Ras Al Khaimah has seen an exponential increase in the number of tourists visiting, with its half-year target of 500,000 visitors being exceeded by May.
The Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority announced that from January to May 2012, a total of 523,568 people visited the emirate, which compares to a total of 835,200 for the entirety of 2011.
Both beach and city hotels saw the positive effects, with total revenue of AED 277 million (US $75.5 million) in the first five months of the year.
City hotels saw an increase in daily average rates of more than 20% and a 32% increase in RevPAR, with occupancy seeing a 6% jump to 73%. Beach hotels witnessed the same level of results, with average occupancy up 6% to 82%, and 23% and 32% jumps in average daily rates and RevPAR, respectively.
Victor Louis, chief operating officer, Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority, said: "Ras Al Khaimah's popularity among domestic, regional and international visitors continues to rise. This is an extremely encouraging result that both supports and bolsters Ras Al Khaimah's success as a global affordable luxury destination offering leisure and adventure experiences as well as a viable destination ripe for further tourism investment."
He added: “In the coming months we are working on a series of new tourism projects with a budget of U$ 500 million that was assigned by the Government of Ras Al Khaimah until end of 2013. We are also tapping into new source markets and looking into expanding and developing charter flights direct to Ras Al Khaimah from European cities after the success of the charter flights from Germany, Austria and Sweden that we introduced in 2011, bringing more 55,000 visitors to the emirate.”
Germany was the main source market for the emirate, with 172,700 visitors in the first five months, followed by domestic tourists from the UAE, totalling 114,000. The authority’s target for 2013 is to welcome 1.2 million visitors, and is looking to have an inventory of 10,000 rooms by 2016.
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