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19 March 2024

New Year 2016 holidays: Why the world wants to come to Dubai

Published
By Shuchita Kapur

Dubai is fast establishing itself as a preferred destination among global travellers, and its efforts are paying off.

The emirate has been gaining popularity as the world’s favourite New Year destination. According to data released by Kayak, a travel booking website, Dubai is the number 1 trending New Year’s Eve destination users search for on the site.

Tourism is one of the most important sectors of Dubai’s economy, and the city has set a target of attracting 20 million visitors per annum by the year 2020.

The recent stats point to the fact that the emirate is taking rapid strides towards achieving that ambition.

The site Kayak ranks the cities proving most popular in airfare searches for places to ring in 2016 and Dubai takes the top slot, beating all other popular cities.

Ranking of New Year’s Eve trending destinations

#1 Dubai, United Arab Emirates

#2 Cartagena, Colombia

#3 Barcelona, Spain

#4 Reykjavik, Iceland

#5 Tokyo, Japan

#6 Atlanta, Georgia

#7 Santiago, Chile

#8 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

#9 Chicago, United States

#10 Vancouver, Canada

Dubai recently rolled out destination marketing campaign to help travellers see the city as their holiday or business destination of choice. In its first month, the campaign's brand video, titled The Spirit of Dubai, has already received over 10 million hits on YouTube.

“Dubai's range of attractions, experiences and events already holds great appeal for families from across all of our source markets, and with four major theme parks opening in Dubai next year, this is set to be significantly enhanced. Coming in the midst of our first ever global destination marketing campaign, which positions Dubai as a city of endless possibilities, we are here at WTM to show why families across the UK and Europe will recognise our emirate as the destination of choice for 2016," said Issam Kazim, CEO of Dubai Tourism, during World Travel Market (WTM), that took place in London recently.

That’s not all. According to a recent poll undertaken by a UK-based travel agency, Dubai is also the most favoured long-haul city break destination for UK residents.

The survey of 1,400 British flyers named Dubai, which is expected to welcome 1 million British visitors during 2016, their favourite long-haul destination, beating New York to the top spot.

The travel and holiday survey conducted by this company has revealed Dubai as the UK’s favourite long-haul city break destination, garnering a massive 25 per cent of the vote.

New York, which attracted an incredible 56 million people from around the globe last year, was named the second favourite long-haul city break destination amongst British travellers with 12 per cent of cotes, less than half the votes that Dubai attracted.

Travellers named the Thai capital of Bangkok as their third favourite long haul city break destination with 8 per cent whilst Sydney came in fourth with 6 per cent.

Singapore completes the top five favourite city break destinations for British travellers, coming in fifth place with 5 per cent of the vote.

Top five long-haul city break destinations

#1 Dubai: 25 per cent

#2 New York: 12 per cent

#3 Bangkok: 8 per cent

#4 Sydney: 6 per cent

#5 Singapore: 5 per cent