Tourism Breaking News
The 50th UAE National Day Celebrations will mark the country’s Golden Jubilee, since the nation’s founding in 1971, officially marked by the federal unification of the six emirates (seven in 1972 after Ras Al Khaimah joined). These two tables compare the same dates ranges on event date for National Day, meaning that it is a like for like comparison. Pre-covid, whilst the UAE remains #1 as a top destination, it is far more heavily weighted in 2021 vs 2019, with 84% of travellers choosing to travel in the UAE. Whilst travel restrictions have eased, vaccine rollouts have ramped up and PCR test costs decrease, travellers still appear to be choosing to stay local and travel within the Emirates as opposed to 2019 where there was a much higher distribution of travellers looking to travel abroad. Taking the same date range and looking further at the breakout by city, whilst the ranking has not changed significantly between 2019 and 2021, there is a slightly higher % of travellers that are looking to travel to Dubai (53% in 2021 vs 49% in 2019) versus the other Emirates. Looking further at the top departure dates between 2019, 2020 and 2021, taking the same date range as previously mentioned, there was a far higher % of people who travelled to the United Arab Emirates ahead of National Day (45% 3 days ahead of National Day), versus 2020 and 2021, where people travelled to the United Arab Emirates the day before National Day. In observing the search to travel lead times, we also found a much shorter search to travel lead time window in 2021 vs 2019 with 39% of hotel search events taking place within …
Read More »National Day insights by Sojern
