Chinese travellers top Abu Dhabi's source market, TRI reports

At the ninth edition of the Hotelier Middle East: Great GM Debate 2018, the conference kicked off with an ignite talk on market insights and forecast by TRI Consulting director Christopher Hewett.

During his presentation, Hewett highlighted the 5.1% uptick in Abu Dhabi’s visitor numbers year-to-date in June 2018 accounting to total of 2.41 million visitors to the emirate. Among them, travellers from China came out on top with 214,600 visitors followed by Indian travellers at 196,600. UK visitors took the third spot with 135,200 visiting the emirate followed by 94,700 from the US and 71,300 from Germany.

Chinese travellers were also the highest increase among arrivals volume with a hike of 15.8%.

During the same period, Abu Dhabi reflected 71% occupancy within its hotels, a 2% higher than the previous period with a 2.1% increase in the supply of rooms within Abu Dhabi totalling to 31,236 keys.

Dubai on the other hand, while a much larger tourism hub compared to Abu Dhabi, experienced 0.5% dip in visitors YTD June 2018 at 8.1 million visitors with travellers from India topping its source market. Russian visitors accounted for the highest increase in arrival volume to the emirate at 172,000 reflecting a 74% increase.