Sharjah posts 11pc jump in 2012 tourists

Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority, or SCTDA, released the tourism statistics for Year 2012 on the sidelines of the ITB Berlin on Saturday citing tremendous and continuous growth of Sharjah’s tourism sector.

More than 1,739,240 tourists visited the emirate in 2012 registering a remarkable 11 per cent growth over previous year’s figure of 1,562,869, according to the annual statistics report released at the high-profile international tourism and travel convention in the German capital.

The 2012 tourism statistics record hotel occupancy rate in the emirate in the range of 75 per cent while the occupancy percentage of hotel apartments in the emirate stands at 72 per cent. The overall average of hotel and hotel apartment occupancy stands at 74 per cent.

Year 2012 also saw a remarkable increase in overall hotel occupancy, touching 2,045,690 room nights which includes 1,215,636 hotel room nights and 830,054 hotel apartment room nights, showing an increase of 13 per cent from previous year (2011), which had record 1,804,530 room nights, including 1,026,934 hotel room nights and 777,596 hotel apartment room nights.

The number of hotel facilities has also undergone a change in Sharjah with the number of hotels and hotel apartments standing at 101 (55 hotel apartments and 46 hotels) and number of rooms reaching 9,141. The number of hotel rooms now stands at 5,171 rooms while 3,970 is the number of hotel apartment rooms. As for the profile of Sharjah’s visitors, the Europeans and Gulf nationals rank first in the number of tourists the emirate received last year. While at 621,315 the Europeans form 36 per cent of Sharjah’s total number of tourists, the GCC tourist numbers stood at 618,487 forming another 36 per cent. The tourists from other Arab countries stood at 220,617 representing 13 per cent. Asian tourists at 227,554 formed another 13 per cent chunk of Sharjah’s tourists during Year 2012.

“The positive statistics are a testament to continuous growth and progress in the tourism sector in the emirate, underscoring Sharjah’s leading position in the region. He said that Sharjah today figures high in the list favorite tourist destinations for both European .