Guest segments: who stays in UAE hotels and why

Guest segments34 min read · Sources & credits

In this chapter

Chapter 05

This chapter examines the available public data on each group of guests staying in UAE hotels: the size of each group, spending, length of stay, travel dates and booking habits. Some groups are much better documented than others. Business events are measured in detail (Dubai World Trade Centre alone recorded 2.18m attendees at 108 large-scale events in 2025, 44% of them international, staying 5.6 days and spending AED 3.79bn on accommodation), while leisure, visiting friends and relatives and non-event business travel are not separated from the 19.59m international overnight visitors Dubai counted in 2025 (Dubai Media Office; DET, via Dubai Media Office). Resident staycations, long stays and short-haul regional travel became the defensive segments of 2026 (Rental Scale-Up; Cavendish Maxwell, via Skift).

In brief

Dubai does not publish a leisure versus business split of its 19.59m 2025 visitors; average length of stay was 3.7 nights for the full year and 3.6 nights for January to September 2025 (DET, via Dubai Media Office; TravelDailyNews citing DET).
Western Europe (4.1m, 21%), GCC (2.99m, 15%), CIS and Eastern Europe (2.89m, 15%) and South Asia (2.89m, 15%) were the four largest source regions in 2025; in January to August 2026 South Asia (17%) and the Gulf (16%) overtook CIS and Eastern Europe (14%) (DET, via Dubai Media Office; Dubai government, via The National, Jan to Aug 2026).
MICE is the best-documented segment: DWTC international attendees spent over AED 9,900 per event, almost seven times a local attendee, and stayed 5.6 days against a citywide average of 3.7 nights (Dubai Media Office, 2025; TravelDailyNews citing DET, 2025). Abu Dhabi hosted about 6,600 MICE events and 2.2m delegates in 2025, up 40% (Abu Dhabi Media Office).
Dubai Business Events submitted 747 bids in 2025 and secured 504, for events to be hosted through 2029 (Dubai Media Office).
Cruise: Dubai Customs processed 281,775 passengers on 187 ship calls in January to November 2024; the 2025-26 Gulf season was cut short in March 2026 and Costa has cancelled its winter 2027-28 programme.
Medical tourism: DHA's latest published year is 2023, with 691,000+ health tourists and AED 1.03bn direct spend; no newer comparable annual series was found in the sources reviewed.
Stopover: the Abu Dhabi Stopover Programme grew from 12,000 guests (2023) to 85,000 (2024) with a forecast of 130,000+ for 2025; Dubai publishes no comparable figure and the last transit data is from 2018 (Etihad Airways press release, 2023; ATM / WTM press release).
Residents: Visa cardholder data for Eid Al Adha 2025 (5 to 8 June) show 12% of frequent UAE travellers stayed in the country (10% in 2024), Visa-observed domestic travel spend up 68% across all spending categories, and Dubai taking 70% of that observed spend. musafir.com reported National Day 2025 holiday bookings up 35% year on year, an operator observation.
Long stays became structural in 2026: 29+ night stays tripled to about one-third of Dubai short-term rental booked nights in April 2026, and one operator reports 25 to 30% of its business from long stays.
Luxury was the most exposed class in 2026: in Cavendish Maxwell's Dubai sample, Luxury class occupancy was 51.2% in H1 2026 with ADR down 6.2%, the deepest rate fall of any class.

How the UAE counts guests, and what it does not count

Dubai's Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) publishes visitors by source region and hotel KPIs, but not purpose of visit, party composition or booking channel. Dubai recorded 19.59m international overnight visitors in 2025, up 5% from 18.72m in 2024, with hotel occupancy of 80.7% and ADR of AED 579 (DET, via Dubai Media Office). For January to September 2025 the average stay was 3.6 nights on 13.95m visitors and 32.7m room nights (Gulf News, Jan to Sep 2025). For the full year the average stay was 3.7 nights (TravelDailyNews citing DET, 2025).

The source-region table is the closest DET comes to a segment profile. In 2025 Western Europe supplied 4.1m visitors (21%), the GCC 2.99m (15%), CIS and Eastern Europe 2.89m (15%), South Asia 2.89m (15%), MENA 2.17m (11%), North East and South East Asia 1.85m (9%), the Americas 1.40m (7%), Africa 897,000 (5%) and Australasia 401,000 (2%) (DET, via Dubai Media Office). In January to August 2026 the mix shifted: Western Europe 20%, South Asia 17%, Gulf 16%, CIS and Eastern Europe 14% (Dubai government, via The National, Jan to Aug 2026).

Abu Dhabi's DCT publishes hotel guests rather than visitors: 5.9m hotel guests in 2025 (up 2.2%) within 26.6m total visitors, plus 338,000 guests in holiday homes and glamping, 81% occupancy and an average stay of 2.9 nights (Abu Dhabi Media Office). Sharjah counted 2.1m hotel guests in 2025 with a 2-night average stay, on Cavendish Maxwell's advisory figures rather than an official census, and Ras Al Khaimah 1.35m overnight visitors. None of the four authorities publishes a leisure, business, family or couple split.

The evidence that follows covers five distinct dimensions, which should be considered separately: nationality or source region (published by DET and DCT), purpose of trip (not published), party type (not published), property class (published for Dubai by advisory firms) and booking channel (not published for inbound guests). A figure on one dimension does not describe another: a South Asian visitor is not thereby a leisure visitor, and a Luxury class occupancy rate says nothing about who the guest is.

Not established in reviewed sources. Leisure versus business share of Dubai or Abu Dhabi visitors. DET's Visitor Survey and DCT Abu Dhabi's guest research are not published. The only indirect indicator is DWTC's count of 947,000 international business-event attendees against 19.59m total Dubai visitors in 2025 (Dubai Media Office; DET, via Dubai Media Office). The DET Visitor Survey summary and the purpose-of-visit series from Euromonitor or Tourism Economics (paid) are the likely holders.

Leisure holidaymakers and families

Size and seasonality

DET does not publish purpose of trip, so leisure cannot be derived as a residual after business events: leisure, visiting friends and relatives, non-event business travel and medical travel are separate categories that the published totals do not separate. What the monthly series does show is the seasonal shape of the market. December 2025 was the first month in which Dubai exceeded 2m international visitors (Khaleej Times citing DET). CoStar recorded December 2025 occupancy of 84.3% (up 3.4%), ADR of AED 1,042.11 (up 11.1%) and RevPAR of AED 878.19, the best December RevPAR since 2007, with nine consecutive nights above 80% occupancy and AED 1,000 ADR from 23 December and New Year's Eve at 94.1% occupancy and AED 2,286.60 ADR. February 2025 occupancy was 90% and January to February 2026 averaged 84.8% before the conflict (CoStar News). The summer floor is visible in the recovery data: August 2026 occupancy of 66% was described as 89% of the August 2025 level (Khaleej Times citing DET).

Before the conflict, Dubai's 2025 year-to-date occupancy by area ran from 86% in Dubai Marina and 85% on Palm Jumeirah to 77% in Downtown, with beach districts leading; the area series does not record purpose of trip, so the link to leisure demand is an inference, not a published finding (Khaleej Times citing DET).

Source regions and what the authorities say

Western Europe is the largest feeder at 21% of 2025 visitors, and its share slipped only to 20% in January to August 2026, while South Asia rose from 15% to 17% and the Gulf from 15% to 16% (DET, via Dubai Media Office; Dubai government, via The National, Jan to Aug 2026). Hoteliers quoted in October 2026 describe the shift directly: IHCL calls India its most reliable source market and is targeting short-haul markets five to six flight hours away (India, China, Russia), and describes long-haul recovery as "wishful thinking" while jet fuel costs are high.

Families

No authority publishes the share of visitors travelling with children. The only dated trade signal is musafir.com's report that National Day 2025 holiday bookings rose 35% year on year, an operator observation rather than a market measure; the same press coverage carried further estimates of family share and itinerary length that rest on different bases (operator bookings, Airbnb searches, itinerary preferences) and are not reproduced here. Global Village, a family attraction, drew 10.5m visitors in Season 29 (2024-25) (Dubai Media Office); Season 30 closed temporarily during the regional disruption and no total was published; Season 31 opens 14 October 2026 (The National).

How leisure travellers book

YouGov's 2025 UAE survey found that 1 in 3 UAE residents planned at least three trips in 2025, 77% of do-it-yourself bookers use comparison sites for price, and more than two-thirds face a stress point when booking; net satisfaction scores were Booking.com 62.5, trivago 55.6, Expedia 53.6, Wego 50.9 and MakeMyTrip 49.5. This describes residents booking outbound trips, not inbound visitors booking UAE hotels; no inbound booking-channel survey for UAE leisure visitors was found, and SiteMinder's global 2026 booking report lists no Middle East market.

Not established in reviewed sources. Share of UAE visitors travelling as families or couples, and booking channel by inbound segment. Holders: DET Visitor Survey, Expedia Group, Booking.com and Visa's Travel Pulse family edition (a September 2025 page exists but could not be fetched for this edition).

For hotel marketersSeason and source region are separate dimensions. The published series show a December to February occupancy peak and a 2026 shift in source share towards South Asia and the Gulf (CoStar/STR press release (Dubai hotel industry posts best December performance in nearly two decades); The National, data Dubai government) ; whether a property's marketing calendar should prioritise Indian school holidays, Eid or GCC weekends depends on its own booking data by nationality and arrival date. A resident package around National Day is supported where the property's own bookings show the lift that one operator reported for 2025 (Gulf News citing musafir.com and Airbnb (as #8)) .

Couples, honeymoon and destination weddings

Dubai publishes no wedding or honeymoon count. The available evidence is a ranking and trade estimates. Bounce research places Dubai third among wedding destinations on social media and sixth globally (Khaleej Times, 2025). One planner handles 12 to 15 weddings a year with budgets above AED 2m for clients mainly from the UK and US, then Germany, India and Australia; luxury weddings are quoted at AED 350,000 to AED 10m or more; five-star hotels report 20 to 50 destination weddings a year each; and Abu Dhabi's civil marriage reform is credited with 40,000 couples from 200 nationalities (period unclear) (Khaleej Times, 2025). The same article cites 830+ hotels and visa on arrival for 50+ nationalities as the destination's selling points (Khaleej Times, 2025).

Ras Al Khaimah is the only UAE authority that publishes wedding indicators. RAKTDA reported confirmed Indian weddings up 40% or more in H1 2025 and MICE up 36%, with 8,200+ rooms of which more than half are five-star, 7,500 more keys due by 2027 and an India roadshow engaging 300+ travel trade partners. For full year 2025 RAKTDA reported combined MICE and destination-wedding revenue up 25% within 1.35m overnight visitors. RAK's 2025 arrivals growth came from Russia (+20%), China (+19%), India (+14%) and the UK (+10%) (RAKTDA press release).

Indicator	Value	Geography, period	Source
Wedding destination rank (social media / global)	3rd / 6th	Dubai, 2025	Khaleej Times (UAE wedding destination)Industry
Destination weddings per five-star hotel per year	20 to 50	Dubai, 2025	Khaleej Times (UAE wedding destination)Estimate
Luxury wedding budget range	AED 350,000 to AED 10m+	UAE, 2025	Khaleej Times (UAE wedding destination)Estimate
Confirmed Indian weddings, growth	+40%+	RAK, H1 2025	Travel Trade Journal citing RAKTDA VP Iyad RasbeyOfficial
MICE and destination-wedding revenue, growth	+25%	RAK, 2025	Gulf News citing RAKTDA (RAK tourism records highest visitor numbers)Official
Civil marriages since 2022 reform	40,000 couples, 200 nationalities	Abu Dhabi, period unclear	Khaleej Times (UAE wedding destination)Estimate

Not established in reviewed sources. Dubai destination-wedding counts or spend. Holders: DET, Dubai Courts and the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department. RAKTDA publishes growth rates only, not an absolute wedding count.

For hotel marketersWedding demand is named as Indian, British, American and German in origin in the trade sources, and RAK's reported growth came through an India roadshow engaging 300+ travel trade partners (Khaleej Times (UAE wedding destination); Travel Trade Journal citing RAKTDA VP Iyad Rasbey) . A resort whose own wedding enquiries originate in India has a case for a trade channel (roadshows, planners) alongside, or ahead of, consumer advertising.

Business travel and MICE

Dubai: DWTC, Dubai Business Events and Expo City

Business events are the most precisely measured source of demand in the UAE. Dubai World Trade Centre's 2025 economic impact study reports economic output of AED 25.03bn (up 12%), gross value added of AED 14.66bn, 108 large-scale events, about 2.18m attendees of whom nearly 947,000 (44%) were international, international attendee spend of over AED 9,900 per event (almost seven times a local attendee), an average stay of 5.6 days, 22 companions per 100 attendees and accommodation spend of AED 3.79bn (Dubai Media Office). On a wider definition, DWTC hosted 401 events in 2025 with 2.97m attendees, of which 134 MICE events drew 2.19m visitors and about 951,000 international participants (43%) (Khaleej Times). The two DWTC releases use different event scopes, so both attendee counts are recorded.

Dubai Business Events, the city's convention bureau, submitted 747 bids in 2025 and secured 504, for events to be hosted through 2029; the 504 are wins for future events, not events held during 2025, and the other fields of the original release could not be fully re-fetched for this edition and are not reproduced (Dubai Media Office). In H1 2025 alone DBE won 249 of 391 bids (64% conversion, from 58% in H1 2024), with 127,087 expected delegates, including Token2049 2026 (15,000 delegates) and Google conferences in 2026 and 2028 (4,000 each) (Khaleej Times / Dubai Media Office). Expo City Dubai hosted more than 75 events in 2025 drawing "hundreds of thousands" of visitors, with no count published, as reported by syndicated trade press rather than an Expo City release (Zawya).

Abu Dhabi: DCT, ADCEB and ADNEC

Abu Dhabi's April 2026 release reported about 6,600 MICE events in 2025 (up 37%) and 2.2m delegates (up 40%), with the Advantage Abu Dhabi programme supporting 175 events and 464,000 delegates (up 28%) (Abu Dhabi Media Office). An earlier Abu Dhabi Convention and Exhibition Bureau release carried slightly different counts; the later primary release is used here, and the earlier release is cited only for the 2024 baseline of 4,835 events and the stated goal of doubling the MICE sector by 2030 (Zawya press release, ADCEB, 2025). ADNEC Group, the venue operator, reported in its own company release AED 9.2bn economic impact (up 8%), 6.3m visitors across its venues (up 17%), 1,149+ events (up 15%) and 2.17m hotel room nights generated in 2025; economic impact, venue attendance and generated room nights are different measures from company modelling, not independently audited attribution (Zawya press release). DCT also reported 4.2m attendees at 252 culture and leisure events in 2025 (DCT Abu Dhabi, via Gulf News).

Dubai and Abu Dhabi each report business-event audiences above 2m in 2025

Headline attendee or delegate counts as published, millions; measures differ by publisher (DWTC counts large-scale event attendees, DCT counts MICE delegates, ADNEC counts venue visitors)

Source: Dubai Media Office (DWTC 2025 impact), Abu Dhabi Media Office (DCT 2025 results), ADNEC Group release

View accessible chart data

Dubai and Abu Dhabi each report business-event audiences above 2m in 2025 (m)
Measure	2025
ADNEC venues, visitors (Abu Dhabi)	6.3
Abu Dhabi MICE delegates (DCT)	2.2
DWTC large-scale event attendees (Dubai)	2.18
DWTC international attendees (Dubai)	0.947
Advantage Abu Dhabi delegates	0.464

Spend and stay: the MICE premium

The DWTC study is the only UAE source that quantifies a per-head spend and stay for a segment. An international attendee spent over AED 9,900 per event and stayed 5.6 days, against a citywide average stay of 3.7 nights for all 2025 visitors and 2.9 nights in Abu Dhabi (Dubai Media Office; TravelDailyNews citing DET). No leisure spend per visitor is published by DET, so the comparison with leisure is limited to length of stay.

International business-event attendees stay 5.6 days, against 3.7 nights for the average Dubai visitor

Average length of stay as published, days or nights, 2025 unless stated; Dubai holiday-home figures are Valustrat's latest period reported in October 2024 and one operator's Q2 2026 index (First Class), and Sharjah is an advisory figure

Source: Dubai Media Office (DWTC), First Class Property Management via Khaleej Times, Valustrat via AGBI, DET via TravelDailyNews, DCT Abu Dhabi, Cavendish Maxwell (Sharjah)

View accessible chart data

International business-event attendees stay 5.6 days, against 3.7 nights for the average Dubai visitor ()
Measure	Length of stay
DWTC international attendee, Dubai (days)	5.6
Dubai short-term rental, Q2 2026 (nights)	6
Dubai holiday home, Oct 2024 report (days)	5
Dubai all international visitors (nights)	3.7
Abu Dhabi hotel guests (nights)	2.9
Sharjah hotel guests (nights)	2

Corporate travel spend

Regional figures exist but none is UAE-specific. GBTA put Middle East business travel spend at USD 18.1bn in 2024, 1.2% of the global total and 19.4% above pre-COVID, with a forecast CAGR of 6.1%. musafir.com reported Middle East business travel spend up close to 20% in 2025 and its own corporate travel bookings up 35% year on year across the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In the 2026 downturn, Cavendish Maxwell observed that midscale hotels held up better on domestic, regional and corporate demand while luxury and upper-upscale saw the steepest occupancy declines, and Premier Inn reported 91% occupancy in Abu Dhabi and 73% in Dubai in July 2026.

MICE indicator	Dubai	Abu Dhabi	Period	Source
Events	108 large-scale (DWTC); 401 all events	About 6,600 MICE events (DCT, April 2026 release)	2025	Dubai Media Office (DWTC delivers record AED25 billion in economic output in 2025); Khaleej Times (DWTC hosts over 400 events in 2025); Abu Dhabi Media Office (as #27)Official
Attendees or delegates	2.18m (large-scale); 2.97m (all)	2.2m delegates	2025	Dubai Media Office (DWTC delivers record AED25 billion in economic output in 2025); Khaleej Times (DWTC hosts over 400 events in 2025); Abu Dhabi Media Office (as #27)Official
International share	44% (947,000)	Not published	2025	Dubai Media Office (DWTC delivers record AED25 billion in economic output in 2025)Official
Spend per international attendee	AED 9,900+ per event	Not published	2025	Dubai Media Office (DWTC delivers record AED25 billion in economic output in 2025)Official
Average stay	5.6 days	Not published	2025	Dubai Media Office (DWTC delivers record AED25 billion in economic output in 2025)Official
Hotel nights generated	Accommodation spend AED 3.79bn	2.17m room nights (ADNEC)	2025	Dubai Media Office (DWTC delivers record AED25 billion in economic output in 2025); Zawya press release (Modon's ADNEC Group delivers record-breaking AED 9.2bn in economic impact)Official
Bureau bids won	504 of 747, for events through 2029	175 Advantage Abu Dhabi events; 464,000 delegates	2025	Dubai Media Office (Dubai continues business events momentum at IMEX Frankfurt); Abu Dhabi Media Office (as #27)Official
Stated target	Not published	Double MICE sector by 2030	2025 to 2030	Zawya press release, ADCEB (hosts top travel buyers at Meetings Arabia and Luxury Travel Congress)Official

For hotel marketersMICE is the one segment with a published forward pipeline (DBE's 504 wins run to 2029), and the 22 companions per 100 attendees and 5.6-day stay argue for pre- and post-event leisure add-ons marketed to the delegate, not only the organiser, where a property already hosts event delegates (Dubai Media Office (Dubai continues business events momentum at IMEX Frankfurt); Dubai Media Office (DWTC delivers record AED25 billion in economic output in 2025)) .

ONS READING: WHAT "CONVERSION" MEANS FOR MICE AND WEDDINGS The KPIs in this book are mostly transactional (a booking, a stayed night), but group and wedding business converts in stages, and a hotel measuring its marketing against these segments needs the stages defined before it sets a target. ONS uses three: a qualified enquiry (a request for proposal with dates, room block or guest count and budget range, from an organiser or planner with authority to contract); a proposal issued (a dated offer with rates, space and terms, which is the point at which a marketing lead becomes a sales opportunity); and a signed contract (room block or event agreement with deposit terms), after which the measure shifts to pick-up against the block and actualised revenue. Each stage has its own conversion rate (enquiry to proposal, proposal to contract) and its own timescale, often measured in months, so paid or organic traffic to a meetings or weddings page should be judged on qualified enquiries within an attribution window the hotel sets from its own sales cycle, not on bookings. The published sources offer no stage rates for the UAE, so the targets have to come from the property's own sales history.

Cruise passengers

Dubai's most recent official cruise total is from Dubai Customs, as reported by trade press in December 2024: 187 vessel calls, 281,775 passengers and over 1.23m bags processed at Mina Rashid and Dubai Harbour in January to November 2024; the Hamdan bin Mohammed Cruise Terminal can handle up to 14,000 passengers a day, and the port as a whole can host seven cruise ships and up to 25,000 passengers at once. For the 2024-25 season Cruise Arabia listed 87 Dubai itineraries and 34 Abu Dhabi itineraries, six ships homeporting in Dubai (Mein Schiff 4, MSC Euribia, AIDAprima, Costa Smeralda, Resorts World One, Celestyal Journey) and four in Abu Dhabi, and expected "well north of 1 million" cruise tourists Gulf-wide. Dubai Harbour alone welcomed 300,000 passengers in 2022-23 (Dubai Eye / ARN citing Dubai Media Office, Shamal Holding, DP World).

Abu Dhabi forecast 174 cruise calls across two terminals for 2025-26 (up 27%) and cited about 700,000 "cruise arrivals" the previous year, a term whose definition is unclear (CruiseMapper citing DCT Abu Dhabi). The season was then cut short, as logged in CruiseMapper's Dubai port news (an aggregator whose headlines were accessed on 26 October 2026; the cruise lines' own announcements are the primary record for each event): Celestyal cancelled two Iconic Arabia sailings and repositioned its fleet out of the Gulf on 9 March 2026, Aroya ended its inaugural Gulf season early the same day, six ships remained in Gulf ports on 29 March after operations were suspended in late February, Celestyal's ships left the Gulf on 26 April, and Costa cancelled its winter 2027-28 Gulf programme on 12 July 2026.

Not established in reviewed sources. Dubai full-season passenger totals for 2024-25 and 2025-26, Abu Dhabi passenger totals, and pre- or post-cruise hotel nights. Holders: Dubai Cruise Committee, DP World, Shamal Holding, Dubai Customs, DCT Abu Dhabi and AD Ports Group.

For hotel marketersCruise feeds hotel nights only at homeports, and with Costa's 2027-28 withdrawal a hotel near Mina Rashid or Zayed Port whose booking data shows cruise-linked nights cannot assume that volume returns before the 2028-29 season unless new homeport announcements are made (Cruise Arabia (Overview of 2024/25 Middle East cruise season); CruiseMapper port news (Dubai, Port Rashid-Dubai Harbour)) .

Medical tourism

The Dubai Health Authority's latest release covers 2023: 691,000+ health tourists (674,000 in 2022), direct spend of AED 1.03bn (AED 992m in 2022) and indirect spend of AED 2.3bn; 58% were women; Asia supplied 33%, the GCC 28% and Europe and CIS 23%; dentistry accounted for 29% of treatments, dermatology 27% and gynaecology 13%, and 48% of dental demand came from the GCC (Dubai Health Authority, 2023). A secondary review published in June 2026 still relied on the 2023 figure of 691,478, and this edition did not establish a newer comparable annual series in the sources reviewed; that is a limitation of the review, not a finding that no such data exist (Zavis).

Asia supplied a third of Dubai's 691,000 health tourists in 2023; dentistry was the leading treatment

Share of health tourists by origin region and by treatment type, %, Dubai, 2023 (DHA); regions and treatments shown do not sum to 100 because smaller categories were not published

Source: Dubai Health Authority, news release 909, 19 Aug 2024

View accessible chart data

Asia supplied a third of Dubai's 691,000 health tourists in 2023; dentistry was the leading treatment (%)
Measure	Share
Asia (origin)	33
GCC (origin)	28
Europe and CIS (origin)	23
Dentistry (treatment)	29
Dermatology (treatment)	27
Gynaecology (treatment)	13

Not established in reviewed sources. DHA volumes for 2024 and 2025, the share of health tourists staying in hotels, and Abu Dhabi medical-tourism volumes (not searched in this edition). Holders: DHA, the Dubai Health Experience programme and the Department of Health Abu Dhabi.

For hotel marketersMedical travellers in the 2023 Dubai data are a GCC and Asian segment skewed to women and to short, repeatable dental and dermatology treatments (Dubai Health Authority (news 909)) ; a hotel near a clinic cluster can package recovery stays, but the only published profile is the 2023 one, so the hotel's own clinic referrals are the better guide to its current mix.

Stopover and transit

Dubai International handled 95.2m passengers in 2025 (up 3.1%) and had expected to approach 99.5m in 2026 before the conflict; its top destinations were London, Riyadh, Mumbai, Jeddah and Delhi (CAPA citing Dubai Airports). By country, India supplied 11.9m passengers, Saudi Arabia 7.5m, the UK 6.3m, Pakistan 4.3m and the US 3.3m (Gulf News citing Dubai Airports, 2025). In H1 2026 DXB handled 31.5m passengers (down 31.3%), recovering from 3.5m in April to 5m in June (Khaleej Times citing Dubai Airports). Dubai Airports now expects about 70m passengers in 2026 (Khaleej Times).

How many of those passengers leave the airport is not published. The last public figure is ATM's 2019 release: more than 63% of DXB's 89m passengers in 2018 were in transit, and 8% of transit passengers left the airport to explore Dubai (ATM / WTM press release). Emirates publishes no Dubai Connect or stopover counts.

Abu Dhabi is the exception. The Abu Dhabi Stopover Programme, run by Etihad and DCT, offers up to two free hotel nights and grew from 12,000 guests in 2023 to 85,000 in 2024; January to April 2025 brought 44,000 visitors (up 76% from 25,000) and 25,000 bookings (up 47%), with 130,000+ forecast for 2025; the markets named are the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, India, Japan and South Korea (Etihad Airways press release, 2023).

Abu Dhabi's Stopover Programme grew from 12,000 to 85,000 guests in one year, with 130,000+ forecast for 2025

Programme guests per year, Abu Dhabi, 2023 to 2025; 2025 is Etihad's forecast made in May 2025, before the 2026 conflict

Source: Etihad Airways press release, 2 May 2025

View accessible chart data

Abu Dhabi's Stopover Programme grew from 12,000 to 85,000 guests in one year, with 130,000+ forecast for 2025 ()
Measure	Stopover guests
2023	12000
2024	85000
2025 (forecast)	130000

Not established in reviewed sources. DXB transit share and Dubai stopover conversion after 2018, and Etihad's actual 2025 stopover count (the 130,000+ figure is a May 2025 forecast, not a result). Holders: Dubai Airports, Emirates, DET, Etihad.

For hotel marketersOnly Abu Dhabi hotels can measure stopover demand, through programme participation (Etihad Airways press release (Etihad and DCT Abu Dhabi celebrate record success of Abu Dhabi Stopover Programme)) ; in Dubai the stopover guest is reachable only through airline packaging and a hotel's transit content has to be judged on its own booking data (ATM / WTM press release (63% of Dubai Airport passengers were in transit during 2018)) .

Long-stay guests, remote workers and residents' staycations

The resident base

The UAE population was 11,294,243 at the end of 2024 (FCSC) and Dubai's reached 4 million on 28 August 2025 (Gulf News). The UAE ranked second globally in VisaGuide's Digital Nomad Visa Index 2025 (fourth in 2023), but no count of remote-work visas issued has been published (Gulf News).

Eid staycations

Visa's card data for Eid Al Adha 2025 describe Visa cardholders in its observation window of 5 to 8 June, not all UAE residents, and the spending covers every category Visa observes, not hotel spend alone. Within that cohort, 87% chose short trips, outbound travel was up 2%, 12% of frequent travellers stayed in the UAE (10% in 2024), domestic travel spend was up 68% and spend per card up 20%; Dubai captured 70% of Visa-observed domestic spend and 52% of domestic travellers, Abu Dhabi 20% and 21%, and Sharjah 5% and 14%. The spend and traveller shares have different denominators, and Dubai's 70% is a share of Visa-observed domestic spend, not of UAE hotel revenue. Hoteliers reported the same holiday from the supply side: IHG UAE bookings up 20% year on year at around 80% occupancy, Media Rotana projecting above 95%, three hotels full, and Rose Rayhaan expecting Gulf visitors up 20% and domestic guests up 10% (Khaleej Times, 2025). Abu Dhabi hotel bookings for Eid Al Fitr 2025 were reported at 56% of capacity against below 40% in 2024 (Gulf News).

Dubai took 70% of Visa-observed domestic Eid spend but only 52% of domestic travellers

Share of Visa-observed domestic travel spend (all spending categories, not hotels alone) and of domestic travellers by destination emirate, %, Visa cardholders in the UAE, Eid Al Adha 5 to 8 June 2025; the two measures have different denominators

Source: Visa newsroom, UAE Eid travel spending insights, 30 Jun 2025

View accessible chart data

Dubai took 70% of Visa-observed domestic Eid spend but only 52% of domestic travellers (%)
Measure	Share of domestic spend	Share of domestic travellers
Dubai	70	52
Abu Dhabi	20	21
Sharjah	5	14

National Day

For the National Day weekend 2025, musafir.com reported holiday bookings up 35% year on year. This is an operator observation, not a UAE hotel occupancy or revenue measure; the further estimates in the same coverage (Airbnb search growth, family share of bookings, itinerary lengths and villa listing rates) rest on different bases and are not used here.

Long stays in 2026

During the conflict, long stays became a core source of demand rather than a niche segment. In Dubai short-term rentals, PriceLabs data quoted in April 2026 show 35,316 active listings against 31,265 a year earlier and 183,410 booked nights against 426,992; within those nights, 29+ night stays tripled in March to April 2026 to about one-third of booked nights, while the median booking window fell from 6 days to 3 (Rental Scale-Up). The same article's early-April occupancy and pace comparisons are internally inconsistent and are not used (Rental Scale-Up, 2026). One operator's Q2 2026 index put the average stay at 6 nights (5 a year earlier) with about 70% of its own portfolio nights from 29+ night stays. AirDNA recorded a rise in 28+ day rentals UAE-wide in Q3 2026. On the hotel side, Majestic Hotels says long stays are 25 to 30% of its business and expects Q4 2026 rates 15 to 20% below last year. DET's August 2026 release reported mid-range hotel apartments at 73% occupancy, the highest category for January to August 2026 (Emirates 24, Jan-Aug 2026).

Government programmes aimed at residents "

"A Dubai Invite" asked residents to refer visiting friends and relatives: eligible arrivals ran from 20 July to 31 October 2026, with hotel discounts of up to 45% plus resort credit equal to 100% of the room rate at participating hotels (Marriott's Mina Seyahi properties, Melia, selected IHG) (Bizcommunity citing DET, Jul-Dec 2026). It had drawn 90,000+ applications by September 2026 (Khaleej Times citing DET). RAKTDA reports that Ras Al Khaimah's Q2 2026 domestic campaign delivered 127,817 additional visitors, 224,000 room nights and AED 104.4m in hotel revenue, with domestic arrivals up 47% in H1 2026; these are authority-reported outcomes, not independently measured incremental revenue.

Not established in reviewed sources. Share of UAE hotel room nights from residents. Dubai does not publish it; Abu Dhabi publishes domestic holiday-home guests only (82,900 in 2025, up 114%) (TradeArabia citing DCT Abu Dhabi). The Dubai Pulse open hotel-performance dataset carries monthly occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, room-night and length-of-stay fields by hotel category, not guest residence. Remote-work visa counts sit with ICP, GDRFA and the Abu Dhabi Residents Office.

For hotel marketersIn the published data, short-term rental bookers booked late in spring 2026 (3-day median window), Visa's Eid cohort spent mostly in Dubai (70% of observed domestic spend) and resident demand clustered on Eid, National Day and summer (Rental Scale-Up (Dubai Short-Term Rental Market 2026); Visa newsroom (UAE Travelers Seek Cooler Weather Abroad This Eid Al Adha; Local Staycations Also Rise)) . These describe rentals and cardholders, not hotel guests; a hotel whose own data shows the same late-booking resident pattern has a case for always-on presence rather than bursts, and one whose 29+ night share is material, as it is for a third of STR nights and a quarter of one hotel group's business, has a case for a separate long-stay rate plan (Rental Scale-Up (Dubai Short-Term Rental Market 2026); Skift, quoting Majestic Hotels) .

Religious, Ramadan and Eid travel

The UAE has no pilgrimage demand of its own, so this segment is defined by Gulf travel at Eid and by the Ramadan dip. CoStar's Ramadan 2025 note observed that Dubai and Abu Dhabi tend to hold occupancy better during Ramadan than capital markets reliant on business and government demand, and that forward occupancy placed Dubai and Abu Dhabi close behind Makkah, but published no UAE numbers. GCC visitors were 15% of Dubai's 2025 arrivals (2.99m) and 16% in January to August 2026 (DET, via Dubai Media Office; Dubai government, via The National, Jan to Aug 2026). Saudi Arabia supplied 200,652 Abu Dhabi hotel guests in 2025 (Abu Dhabi Media Office).

Eid Al Fitr 2026 fell inside the conflict trough. Dubai occupancy was 28.2% in the week ending 21 March 2026 (Eid week), with an Eid weekend peak of about 42%; Abu Dhabi averaged 47.7% over the four Eid days with a peak of 55.7%, down 45% year on year (CoStar News, 2026). Abu Dhabi's Q1 2026 figures (attribution unverified) show UAE-resident guests down 30% to 156,000 and GCC guests down 25.9% to 63,000 (Travel And Tour World). Eid Al Adha 2025, eight months earlier, had hoteliers reporting 80% to 100% occupancy and Gulf visitor growth of 20% (Khaleej Times).

Not established in reviewed sources. Ramadan occupancy and ADR deltas for Dubai or Abu Dhabi; CoStar's note is qualitative only. The Dubai Pulse monthly dataset carries the occupancy and ADR fields from which Ramadan deltas could be computed.

For hotel marketersEid is a GCC and resident peak whose dates move each year (Visa newsroom (UAE Travelers Seek Cooler Weather Abroad This Eid Al Adha; Local Staycations Also Rise); Khaleej Times (Eid Al Adha: some hotels 100% occupancy, staycations rise)) . Saudi Arabia supplied 200,652 Abu Dhabi hotel guests in 2025 and was DXB's second-largest passenger market (Abu Dhabi Media Office (Abu Dhabi's culture and tourism sectors delivered strong growth in 2025); Gulf News citing Dubai Airports) ; a hotel whose guest data shows a Saudi or wider GCC share has a case for a dated annual plan around the two Eids and Ramadan with Arabic creative.

Luxury and high-net-worth travellers

Dubai ranked seventh in the Julius Baer Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report 2025 (twelfth in 2024), the highest in the Middle East; 53% of high-net-worth respondents increased business travel and 47% increased leisure travel, and Henley puts Dubai's HNWI population growth at 102% in a decade (Gulf News). The wider evidence is global, not UAE-specific: JLL puts HNW travellers at about 36% of global travel spend and Grand View forecasts luxury travel growth of 7.9% a year from 2024 to 2030 (Mastercard newsroom).

On the supply side, Luxury class is 20.4% of Dubai rooms (Cavendish Maxwell, H1 2025) and 47% of the 12,861-room Dubai pipeline that Knight Frank forecast in October 2025, a pipeline being planned rather than operating stock. The luxury price points visible in 2025 include New Year's Eve ADR of AED 2,286.60 citywide, Palm Jumeirah villa short-term rental listing rates of up to AED 6,960 per day on property portals in H1 2025 (asking rates, not realised ADR) and wedding budgets above AED 2m (CoStar/STR press release; Khaleej Times citing Bayut and dubizzle). Branded residences, the real-estate crossover for this segment, number 175 schemes in Dubai (68 completed, 107 pipeline, and pipeline schemes are not operating supply), with the UAE holding 19% of the global pipeline (Khaleej Times citing Knight Frank, 2026).

The 2026 downturn hit this class hardest. In Cavendish Maxwell's Dubai sample, Luxury class occupancy was 51.2% in H1 2026 with ADR down 6.2%, the sharpest rate fall of any class, against Upper Midscale at 65.7%; these are reported H1 observations, separate from the firm's full-year forecast. Cavendish Maxwell confirmed that luxury and upper-upscale hotels had the steepest occupancy declines, and IHCL cut rates by up to 40% at the peak of the crisis.

Not established in reviewed sources. HNW visitor count or luxury-traveller spend in the UAE. The affluent-travel evidence cited is global and MENA-level (Mastercard newsroom, 2024). Holders: Mastercard Economics Institute UAE, Visa, Knight Frank Wealth Report, DET luxury segment reports (unpublished).

For hotel marketersLuxury class fell furthest in H1 2026 in the Dubai sample, and the operators quoted attribute the fall to long-haul, confidence-sensitive demand (Khaleej Times citing Cavendish Maxwell (Dubai hotel occupancy to recover in H2 2026 after sharp first-half decline); Skift, quoting Saurabh Tiwari, VP Middle East, IHCL) . Whether a luxury property should hold rate with a domestic offer or discount depends on its own mix of resident and long-haul guests; the published data do not settle it.

Sports and events tourism

Abu Dhabi's Formula 1 Grand Prix drew 203,000 race attendance in 2025 (up 6% from 192,000 in 2024), 339,000 total race-week visitors to Yas Island and 136,000 Yasalam concert fans (up 9%) (Dubai Eye / ARN citing Ethara). DCT counted 4.2m attendees at 252 culture and leisure events in 2025 (up 20%) and 1.4m visitors at Louvre Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi, via Gulf News). A Disney theme park resort on Yas Island was announced in May 2025 with no timeline, size or investment disclosed (Aletihad / WAM).

In Dubai, Global Village recorded 10.5m visitors across 30 pavilions in Season 29, but no Season 30 total was published after the 2026 closure (Dubai Media Office; The National). One destination management company, Desert Adventures Tourism, reports golf tourism to Dubai up 40% year on year since 2021 and at least 9,000 sporting-event customers a year across F1, golf, marathons and chess.

Not established in reviewed sources. Dubai Sports Council impact, Dubai World Cup, Dubai Marathon and Coca-Cola Arena attendance, Yas Island annual visitors, and DSF and DSS footfall were not searched for this edition. Holders: Dubai Sports Council, DFRE, Miral, Ethara.

For hotel marketersThe F1 weekend is the only sports event with published volume, and its 339,000 race-week visitors against 203,000 race attendees show that event weeks bring non-ticketed demand too (Dubai Eye / ARN citing Ethara (Abu Dhabi achieves record 339,000 visitors at Grand Prix)) ; event-week rate strategy has to rest on the hotel's own pickup data.

Cross-segment view: what the evidence supports

Segment	Best published size measure	Stay	Season	Source
Leisure	Not separated from 19.59m visitors	3.7 nights (all visitors)	Dec to Feb peak	Dubai Media Office (Dubai's tourism industry achieves third successive record-breaking year), data DET; TravelDailyNews citing DET (Dubai records 19.59m international visitors in 2025); CoStar/STR press release (Dubai hotel industry posts best December performance in nearly two decades)Official
Families	Not published; one operator's National Day 2025 bookings +35%	Not published	National Day, Eid, summer	Gulf News citing musafir.com and Airbnb (as #8)Estimate
Weddings	20 to 50 per five-star hotel per year	Not published	Not published	Khaleej Times (UAE wedding destination); Travel Trade Journal citing RAKTDA VP Iyad RasbeyEstimate
MICE	2.18m DWTC attendees; 2.2m Abu Dhabi delegates	5.6 days	Event calendar	Dubai Media Office (DWTC delivers record AED25 billion in economic output in 2025); Abu Dhabi Media Office (as #27)Official
Cruise	281,775 passengers (Dubai, Jan to Nov 2024)	Not published	Oct to Apr	Cruise Hive citing Dubai Customs (Dubai Port Breaks Annual Record for Cruise Passenger Arrivals)Official
Medical	691,000+ (Dubai, 2023)	Not published	Not published	Dubai Health Authority (news 909)Official
Stopover	85,000 (Abu Dhabi, 2024)	Up to 2 free nights	Year-round	Etihad Airways press release (Etihad and DCT Abu Dhabi celebrate record success of Abu Dhabi Stopover Programme)Platform
Residents and long stay	12% of Visa frequent travellers domestic at Eid 2025; 29+ nights one-third of Dubai STR nights (Apr 2026)	6 nights (one operator's STR index, Q2 2026)	Eid, National Day, summer	Visa newsroom (UAE Travelers Seek Cooler Weather Abroad This Eid Al Adha; Local Staycations Also Rise); Rental Scale-Up (Dubai Short-Term Rental Market 2026); Khaleej Times citing First Class Property Management UAE STR IndexPlatform
Luxury and HNW	20.4% of rooms Luxury class	Not published	Dec to Feb	Cavendish Maxwell (Dubai Hospitality Market Performance H1 2025, PDF); CoStar/STR press release (Dubai hotel industry posts best December performance in nearly two decades)Industry
Sports and events	339,000 F1 race-week visitors	Not published	Dec (F1), Oct to May (Global Village)	Dubai Eye / ARN citing Ethara (Abu Dhabi achieves record 339,000 visitors at Grand Prix); Dubai Media Office (Global Village marks conclusion of record-breaking Season 29)Industry

ONS READING The UAE's segment data is strong where a venue operator or airline has a commercial reason to count (DWTC, ADNEC, Etihad) and weak wherever the guest is simply a tourist. That shapes what a hotel marketer can do with public evidence: MICE and stopover can be planned against published volumes and calendars; leisure, families and weddings cannot, so first-party data (booking engine, CRM, Google Analytics) has to stand in for the missing market benchmark. A second finding is that the types of demand that held up changed in 2026. The evidence covers distinct dimensions that should not be combined into a single guest profile: residence (residents and 29+ night guests, measured in rentals and card data), source region (the Gulf and South Asia gaining share of Dubai visits) and property class (Luxury falling furthest in one advisory sample). A property whose own guest data shows the same pattern has a case for giving nearby markets greater priority in its 2026-27 plan and treating long-haul luxury as a later recovery, in line with the operator timelines reported in October 2026, which are outlooks rather than results.

Gaps in the evidence

Not established in reviewed sources. Leisure versus business and family share of visitors (likely holders: DET Visitor Survey, DCT); Dubai wedding counts (DET, Dubai Courts); Dubai cruise season totals and cruise-to-hotel conversion (Dubai Cruise Committee, DP World, Dubai Customs); DHA 2024 and 2025 health-tourism volumes and Abu Dhabi DoH figures; DXB transit share after 2018 (Dubai Airports, Emirates); remote-work visa counts (ICP, GDRFA); resident share of hotel room nights (DET; the Dubai Pulse open dataset carries performance fields by hotel category, not guest residence); Ramadan occupancy deltas (STR/CoStar); HNW visitor counts (Mastercard, Visa); Dubai Sports Council, DSF, DSS and Yas Island volumes. Guest segments by hotel class are not published for any emirate.

Sources & evidence notes

Evidence grades describe provenance. Verification status records the supplied editorial review, not a guarantee of accuracy. Cite the original publisher when using a figure.

Cavendish Maxwell (Dubai Hospitality Market Performance H1 2025, PDF) verified

Room share by class: Upscale 24.4%, Upper Upscale 22.6%, Luxury 20.4%, Midscale 14.0%, Upper Midscale 12.9% (text) / 13.1% (table), Economy 5.5%; about 152,000 rooms in about 730 properties; Upscale+UU+Luxury 67.4%

Scope: Dubai, H1 2025
Date: Sep 2025
Evidence grade: INDUSTRY

All figures match, including the internal text-versus-table discrepancy for Upper Midscale that the original claim already flags.

Guest segments: who stays in UAE hotels and why

In brief

How the UAE counts guests, and what it does not count

Leisure holidaymakers and families

Size and seasonality

Source regions and what the authorities say

Families

How leisure travellers book

Couples, honeymoon and destination weddings

Business travel and MICE

Dubai: DWTC, Dubai Business Events and Expo City

Abu Dhabi: DCT, ADCEB and ADNEC

Dubai and Abu Dhabi each report business-event audiences above 2m in 2025

Spend and stay: the MICE premium

International business-event attendees stay 5.6 days, against 3.7 nights for the average Dubai visitor

Corporate travel spend

Cruise passengers

Medical tourism

Asia supplied a third of Dubai's 691,000 health tourists in 2023; dentistry was the leading treatment

Stopover and transit

Abu Dhabi's Stopover Programme grew from 12,000 to 85,000 guests in one year, with 130,000+ forecast for 2025

Long-stay guests, remote workers and residents' staycations

The resident base

Eid staycations

Dubai took 70% of Visa-observed domestic Eid spend but only 52% of domestic travellers

National Day

Long stays in 2026

Government programmes aimed at residents "

Religious, Ramadan and Eid travel

Luxury and high-net-worth travellers

Sports and events tourism

Cross-segment view: what the evidence supports

Gaps in the evidence

Sources & evidence notes

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