The hotels and hotel apartments of the Emirate of Sharjah, adjacent to Dubai, have received 1.3 million guests in 9 months of this year.
The Sharjah Office for Commerce and Tourism Development (SCTDA) announced that the Emirate’s neighboring Dubai hotels and hotel apartments have been visited by 1,318,748 guests in the first 9 months of this year, who spent a total of 2,943,106 nights in Sharjah. These data allow us to judge a 19 percent increase in the indicator relative to the same period of 2015. Over the course of three quarters, the overall occupancy rate remained stable at 62%.
Khalid Jasim Al Midfah, chairman of SCTDA, confirmed that Sharjah's tourism sector has shown impressive results.
“Given that Sharjah is true to its ambitious goals of reaching 10 million visitors by 2021, it is clear that everything indicates good growth. During the first nine months of this year, the Sharjah tourism industry earned 497 million dirhams $ 135.3 million, which indicates the effectiveness of our efforts to strengthen the sector and, as a result, the emirate’s economy, ”he said.
Gulf markets remained the most important source of inbound tourism. However, the emirate has seen a significant increase from other markets. So, outside the region, Europe is of most interest to Sharjah. New contracts signed at the World Travel Market in London this year should contribute to a projected 16 percent increase in traffic from Europe in the near future. The largest increase in tourist flow to Sharjah continues to come from China - 75% in annual terms. The growth rate in the case of tourists from Pakistan is 12%. SCTDA also notes a positive trend in the revival of the Russian market, which has turned up for Sharjah an increase of 8.7%, for the first time since the devaluation of the ruble.
