Ranked among the world’s most visited cities (#4 in pre-pandemic 2019), Dubai welcomes visitors from all across the world. Backpackers, families, business travellers, honeymooners, visiting relatives, transit tourists… there’s room for everyone.

From ultra-luxury resorts to budget B&Bs, from family suites to single rooms, from beachfront properties to serviced apartments, from boutique hotels to hostels, from long-stay condos to short-stay airport hotels, and from timeshares to conference hotels, Dubai offers unparalleled choice to tourists and visitors.

Whether you are an international tourist or a domestic visitor, Dubai has thousands of properties and accommodation to suit every pocket and taste.

Boasting seven of the world’s tallest hotels in its vast and ever-expanding bouquet of hospitality properties, Dubai features prominently among the Top 10 cities with the most hotel rooms in the world. Through these hospitality facilities, the emirate has redefined the concept of entertainment, comfort, luxury, innovation and security.

Dubai was scheduled to host the World’s Expo, the first-ever in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia in 160 years in 2020. However, the coronavirus pandemic changed the global travel and tourism scenario and the world’s third-largest event after the Olympics and Fifa Football World Cup, on which Dubai had spent billions of dollars since 2013, has been rescheduled for October 2021.

Even as it was successfully battling the pandemic’s spread through multi-pronged measures, it took bold measures like allowing tourists from several countries to cross over its shores and enjoy their summer holidays.

A series of initiatives helped the UAE attain the world’s second-highest hotel occupancy rate in 2020. Last year, the UAE welcomed 14.8 million hotel guests, who spent 54.2 million nights across the 180,000 rooms offered by the country’s 1,089 different hotels and hospitality establishments. That brought the average stay to 3.7 nights per guest, with an average return of Dh318.5 per room.

The UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) says the UAE tourism sector was among the least affected and the fastest to recover from the impact of the 21^st century’s second pandemic. According to the statistics issued by the UNWTO and the Emirates Tourism Council, the Arab world’s second-biggest economy ranked second in the world in occupancy rates at hotel establishments with a rate of 54.7 per cent, just behind 58 per cent of China which secured the first position.

The US ranked third with 37 per cent occupancy rates. Hotels in the Middle East region recorded an average occupancy rate of 43 per cent. Domestic tourism contributed Dh41 billion to the national economy in 2020. The UAE suffered the least in terms of tourist traffic in 2020, where activity fell by 45.2 per cent – the least decline in the world.

The UAE was followed by Mexico, where tourist traffic decreased by 52 per cent and then Italy at 63 per cent.