Speaking at Future Hospitality Summit World in Dubai, HE Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri, Minister of Economy of the UAE shared that they target 16% contribution from tourism to GDP by 2031. HE Al Marri further shared that they are on track with the demand and supply and that they target over 450biliion dirhams worth of investments in the hotel industry over the next seven years. Further iterated the need to increase room nights especially by combining medical and wellness tourism. “We are targeting over 450 billion dirhams worth of investments in the hotel industry itself to come in in the next seven years. We are looking at increasing the number of keys, increase the amount of hotels, offers, products coming in. We’re looking at it from a different line. We’re looking at medical tourism, wellness tourism. These are kind of the two topics now that’s really going on in the tourism aspects, but they are segregated. They talk about medical tourism on a separate note, and they talk about wellness tourism on a separate note. To me, wellness and medical has to be combined. I look at it that way because the most important thing is the nights per stay, the tourists who stay in the country. Today, there are about 3 to 4 nights per stay. We want to increase that to 7 nights, 8 nights. That’s the dream for any interest of tourism.”
Read More »