Dubai hotels are after all not as expensive as perceived globally, according to a new study. The emirate ranks only 12th in the world in terms of most expensive cities for hotel guests, with Dubai hotels' average nightly room rates resting at €121.11 (Dh606) for February 2010.

Moscow tops the charts with average room rates per night at €164.82 in February. Dubai hotels, though, recorded some increase in average room rates in the one-month period from January to February 2010 owing to high demand due to Dubai Shopping Festival and various exhibitions and conferences.

According to the Hotel Price Barometer for February 2010 of the online hotel reservation service hotel.info, obtained by Emirates Business, Dubai hotels saw their average room rates going up from €99.15 in January to €121.11 in February, recording a 22 per cent jump, and indicating the gradual return of the yields.

However, Dubai hotels recorded the maximum drop of -43.23 per cent in average room rates in the world from February 2008 to February 2010, according to the barometer, as London showed increasing hotel rates.

It states that the current overnight prices are "still below the level of those before the crisis" but it appears that the "lowest point has been passed".

The hotel.info's barometer in some ways complements the Hotel Price Index released by Expedia's Hotels.com last week. It stated that the average price of a hotel room fell by 14 per cent globally last year, which made Dubai an even more attractive tourist destination for international travellers in 2009 as hotel room rates dropped by 10 per cent in the emirate last year.

When asked how Dubai hotels are projected to perform in 2010, Nigel Pocklington, Vice-President of Strategy and Marketing at Hotels.com, told this newspaper: "There were early signs of hotel prices stabilising in the last quarter of 2009, but the good value for travellers looks set to continue throughout 2010."

Meanwhile, the price barometer by hotel.info shows a definite tendency towards a "stabilisation of overnight hotel prices" based on a comparison of the data from the more than four million hotel price requests made during the month of February alone, compared with the previous month as well as with the comparable period from earlier year.

According to the report, the hotel prices were still lower than those of February 2008 – comparable month before the onset of the crisis – with a few exceptions.

"But in more than half the towns studied, the rates were above those achieved in the crisis February of 2009," the report cites, further adding that prices have recovered during the past month, referring the positive upward trend to mainly Europe.

The majority of European and global destinations show higher hotel prices than the decrease in January, as per the price barometer.

In the year-on-year comparison, February 2010 shows increased hotel prices in half of the global top destinations with New York (+16.6 per cent), Oslo in Norway (+11.3 per cent) and Sydney in Australia (+11.45 per cent) emerging especially strong.

Meanwhile, Bangkok, with average nightly room rate of €56.75 in February 2010, followed by Prague, was placed at the foot of the rankings with rooms costing less than half those in the most expensive cities.

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