Sharjah tourist numbers up 11% in Q1
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International travellers continued into Sharjah registering a significant 11% increase in tourist numbers during the first quarter of Year 2012–from January to March.
This came in the Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority’s Statistics Report for the first quarter unveiled today by the chairman, HE Mohamed Ali Al Noman. The first quarter statistics show a significant increase in hotel occupancy rate touching 78%, compared with 75% in the same period last year. The number of hotel and hotel apartment guests during the first quarter of 2012 stood at 466,218 compared with 421,516 in the same period last year, which is an 11% increase. The total number of hotel and hotel apartment room nights in the first quarter of this year, stands at 539,393 as compared to 478,456 in the same period last year.
This puts the total occupancy rate of hotels and hotel apartments in the emirate at 78% during the first quarter after the recent addition of new hotels and hotel rooms over the past few months.
While the number of hotels in the emirate now stands at 47 with a total number of hotel rooms reaching 5,191, there are 53 hotel apartments with 3,825 rooms. With the emirate now boasting 100 hotels and hotel apartments with a total number of room capacity of 9,015, the first quarter saw an increase of 5 per cent in accommodation capacity.
Interestingly, Western visitors continue to dominate the tourist flow into the emirate known for its grand monuments and breathtaking landscape. With 171,600 European tourists visiting the emirate in the first quarter of 2012, they accounted for 37 per cent of the number of foreign tourists — 466,218 — visiting Sharjah in the period under review. The GCC citizens were not far behind with 166,525 or 36 per cent of them visiting Sharjah in the first quarter. Other Arab travellers stood at 56,698 or 12 per cent.
The Asian tourists also accounted for 12% with 56,153 of them visiting the emirate. They were followed by 8,240 Americans – 2% – and 4,998 Africans—1%. There were 2,004 visitors from the Asia Pacific region too.