Dubai sails at 26% growth
Stressing on the contribution of cruises to increasing its tourist numbers, Dubai Tourism is pushing its cruise offerings across India through its six-city roadshow.
Buoyed by the success of its three-city roadshow in India last year, Dubai Cruise Tourism returned to the country this time with a six-city roadshow plan. Witnessing a huge demand from the country for its cruise packages, the delegation led by Jamal Humaid Al Falasi, Director, Dubai Cruise Tourism, met with cruise companies including MSC Cruises; Costa Cruises and Royal Caribbean Cruises represented by Tirun Travel Marketing in India.
“This is our second roadshow in India. This would allow us to have more passengers opting for cruises from Dubai. We recorded 463,055 cruise tourists in 2015 and are aiming to 1 million by 2020. India’s ranking as a cruise source market for Dubai was 21 in 2013 and it came to 14 in 2015,” Al Falasi said.
Carl Vaz, Director – India, Dubai Tourism, said, “This time we are travelling to six cit- ies for the Dubai Cruise Tourism roadshow — Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. We’ve been very fortunate in 2015 to have 1.6 million Indian overnight visitors in Dubai, these include hotel and hotel apartments guests as well.”
Talking of promotions for cruises in Dubai, Falasi, said, “We are inviting Indians to get a taste of cruising in our region and visit Dubai at the same time. We also have specialised visa for the UAE only for cruise passengers. The multi entry visa is valid for a month, which allows them to cruise for seven nights and use the rest of the days in Dubai. We see 26 per cent increase in Indian arrivals every year and we are targeting to take it to 50 per cent by 2020, helped by the cruise business.”
Vaz added that the travel agent community has been really supportive in India. “We are very grateful to the Indian travel trade community, which has been supporting us vigorously, whether it’s TAAI, TAFI, OTOAI, IAAI or ETA or SKÅL.”