Smart tourists seek smart city services
Dubai’s infrastructure must cater to demands of tech-savvy tourists
If you live in Saudi Arabia, it is likely that Dubai is part of your weekend plans… A lunch majlis shortlisted from the promotions at one of the five-star hotels in the city or a de-stressing spa session at a destination resort following a long day spent trying on perfumes and shoes at a luxury mall may be part of the routine. This picture could be true of the 1.54 million Saudis who travelled to Dubai last year.
The GCC delivered the highest number of visitors, 3.3 million, to the emirate in 2015, up 12.8 per cent over 2014, with Oman accounting for more than a million travelers and Kuwait and Qatar among the top 20 source markets.
In fact, our data shows that the UAE is increasingly becoming the hub of spending by GCC residents, who are, in turn, becoming one of the strongest foundations of economic growth.
In spending patterns, Qataris and Kuwaitis are among the top 10, while Omanis and Bahrainis come in a little lower. The Saudi remains the largest spender among the Khaleejis who visit Dubai.
Largest spenders
Saudi visitors also drive the revenues of the emirate’s hospitality sector, being by far the largest spenders on accommodation, followed by American and then British tourists.
But the most interesting facet thrown up by the spending data gathered by Network International is that the GCC has, over the past two years, eclipsed Europe and the US as the source of Dubai’s highest-spending tourists.
By the middle of 2015, spending by GCC visitors as a bloc really took off. By the end of September 2015, the quarterly spend had increased by 28.86 per cent to Dh1.19 billion compared to the same period in 2014, surpassing the 15.38 per cent increase to Dh927 million from US visitors.
Over the first nine months of 2015, GCC spend increased by 18.1 per cent to Dh3.7 billion, compared to the 11.5 per cent growth to Dh3.2 billion logged by the Americans.
Multi-layered offering
Dubai’s hotels may boast some of the world’s highest average room rates, but the spending patterns also underline the multi-layered nature of Dubai’s tourism offering, the country’s unparalleled infrastructure and an atmosphere that promotes security.
Even with a recent softening, Dubai’s hotels boasted one of the world’s highest occupancy rates at 84.9 per cent in November 2015.
Now let’s look at another set of numbers. More than 67 per cent of Saudis over the age of 16 use a smartphone and the country’s e-commerce market is expected to have hit $13.3 billion in 2015.
So, it’s fair to assume that a huge and growing percentage of the 1.54 million visitors are on their phone, booking rooms, claiming rewards and pre-ordering room service as they make the most of what Dubai has to offer.
At Network International, we put these different sets of data together, coming to the understanding that Dubai does not just have 3.3 million GCC tourists, we have 3.3 million smart tourists, who demand and are responsive to smart services.
It is our job to ensure that the spending infrastructure matches and surpasses the global best-in-class tourism offerings, making it easier for the consumer to access what they want while preventing any down side for the merchants.
Transaction data from the hospitality industry tells us that UAE hotels lose anywhere between D200,000 and Dh500,000 each year to chargebacks and fraud related to online payments. This could occur when payment details get lost or garbled in the system. So, we introduced a system that minimises these incidents by removing any form of manual entry of card details.
It is no surprise that when we launched NeO, or Network Online, the hospitality industry became the number one driver behind its adoption. Today, more than 200 of Dubai’s finest hotels use NeO, the system that allows customers to pay online for room reservations, F&B charges and other facilities.
The added convenience of DCC, or dynamic currency conversion, applied online means that any consumer can pay online without worrying about losing money on currency conversion. For a visitor, this means being able to budget their spend, plan ahead and bypass queues for entry. If you’ve recently visited Dubai Miracle Garden, you’d know exactly what I mean.
Shouldn’t smart tourists, who are one of the strongest pillars of the UAE economy, be entitled to a smart tourism platform? We think so!