Abu Dhabi named as favourite destination in UAE

WAM -- Abu Dhabi has maintained its position as the number one destination in the UAE for guest satisfaction in a report by travel and hotel data specialist organisation, Olery.

The report’s findings highlight Abu Dhabi’s leading position among cities in the Arabian Gulf, with the overall Guest Experience Index registering an 82.8 score, up from 82.2 from the 2016 report.

More than 160,000 reviews were posted for Abu Dhabi, helping to establish the emirate as a popular destination among business travellers, couples and families, with these demographics reporting especially high satisfaction scores. The report added that all kinds of travellers were very satisfied with their stay in the emirate.

The emirate was recognised by guests for its overall value-for-money as a place to visit, with Abu Dhabi’s score for that particular category 85.7. The emirate also scored 88.6 for its excellence of location, an improvement on the previous year’s score of 87.9. Visitors also considered the rooms the cleanest and best in the Middle East with the quality of the service also highlighted in the reviews. The emirate’s cleanliness category scored 91 out of 100, with quality of rooms and quality of service scoring 89.4 and 89.3 respectively.

The ‘Guest Experience in the Middle East’ report conducted by Olery is an exhaustive analysis of visitor experience in the region. The report used data gathered from over 2.5 million online hotel reviews and published guest opinions to assess guest satisfaction from 1st April, 2016 to 31st March, 2017, and then aggregating all data shared in online reviews for a hotel or other type of accommodation.

More than 4.4 million guest arrivals were recorded in the emirate in 2016, which set a new annual record, with an increase of 8 percent over 2015. The number of guest nights reached more than 12 million last year.

Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority has set a target to welcome 4.9 million guests into the emirate for 2017, which is a year-on-year rise of 10 percent. The UAE capital has already welcomed impressive guest arrival figures during the first quarter of this year. During the January to March period there was an increase of 4 percent in hotel guest arrivals over the corresponding period in 2016, with over 1.1 million guest arrivals registered, and more than 3.1 million guest nights recorded in the same period.