Dubai ranked first in global hotel occupancy from January to April 2023

Emirate closes in on pre-pandemic levels as tourism bounces back

Dubai has ranked first globally for hotel occupancy for the January to April period 2023, at 79.9%, just 2.9 percentage points short of the pre-pandemic levels of 82.7%

The new data from the Global Hotel Monitoring Update was revealed in Dubai’s latest city briefing, in which it announced that supply surpassed pre-pandemic levels by a strong 28%. 

Demand in Dubai was 20% of the total 15.9 million room nights in Apr 2023 across the seven cities in the research, London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Istanbul, Bangkok and Singapore. Demand also surpassed pre-pandemic levels by 11%.

While all of the cities in the research have grown their room inventory exceeding 2019 levels, Dubai now only marginally tails London, which holds first place, by 610 rooms.

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The data also reported 6.02 million overnight visitors for January-April with an increase of 18% since the same period last year, which saw 5.10 million overnight visitors in the city. 

The numbers were still not quite 2019 levels for the same period, but were only 3.9% behind.

The year 2023 saw an 11% increase in the occupied room nights from 2022, as well as a 22% increase from the same period 2019. in YTD Apr 2023 vs. YTD Apr 2022 and +22% increase vs. YTD Apr 2019 

Top source markets were led by India, Russia, UK, Saudi and Oman. Also among the top ten were newer countries such as Israel, direct flights which started since 2020 now bringing a wealth of new visitors to the emirate. Also in the top 10 were the US, China, Iran and Germany.