Dubai International Airport (DXB) is the busiest airport hub in the globe. Its sibling, Dubai World Central or Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC), aims to assist DXB with its workload and become the biggest airport in the world. However, the mega-airport’s construction is now on hold.

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the construction for Dubai World Central is on hold because of the weak Gulf economy. Their source, who is familiar with the issue, said that construction has been postponed until further notice.

Plans for Dubai World Central

Once the construction is complete, Dubai World Central will become the biggest airport in the world. It will have an annual capacity of 250 million passengers and bring Emirates at the top as the world’s top long-haul carrier.

Unfortunately, the completion date for the airport’s first phase was pushed back to 2030.

According to Dubai Airports, they are still reviewing the master plan for the airport. They also said that “exact timelines and details of the next steps are not as yet finalized.” The airport also intends to ensure that the development will fit new technologies, optimize investment and meet consumer demand and needs.

Dubai’s economy, as well as other Gulf nations, is down because of the fallout from geopolitical tensions and low fuel prices. Tourism has also dropped since 2017 despite reporting last month that they have reached a record number of tourist arrivals for the first half of 2019.

Emirates is still located at Dubai International and serves as its hub. With the postponement of Dubai World Central, the company is looking for other ways to expand its operations worldwide. The company is currently having problems increasing its routes. It is also revising their fleet after Airbus SE A380 was cancelled.

DWC is currently open since it started in 2013. However, it only serves 11 passenger airlines and records 900,000 tourist arrivals each year. The first phase of the construction would boost its capacity to 130 million. It will be 260 million once the full airport is complete.

Travel to Dubai

Interested in getting to the capital of the United Arab Emirates? There are a lot of articles online to help you out in organizing your travel plans. You can check out the Dubai Tourism Board or the Abu Dhabi Tourism Board to find out more about the two cities. You can also check out our article about the Best Places to Stay in Dubai for some extra ideas.

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Dubai is a major hub for tourists since the country expanded its major attractions for foreign tourists. May it be religious sites to modern attractions, the city has it all. Thanks to this, the city recorded a milestone this month.

On Sunday, August 18, the city revealed that it had welcomed over 8.3 million tourists for the first half of 2019. The numbers are up by 3 percent in comparison to last year’s tally.

Where did these tourists come from

According to Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism), the number of tourists are increasing every month. Most of these tourists come from India with 997,000 tourists. Dubai Tourism had been busy to bring in tourists from India on a large scale “largely due to the high impact delivery of segment and season-specific campaigns across the most accessible Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities.”

Their efforts bore fruit despite the “severe air traffic and seat capacity challenges due to geopolitical volatilities” in India.

After India, Saudi Arabian tourists have also grown in number in Dubai. The report reveals that 755,000 Saudi tourists came in to Dubai already. It is a 2 percent year-on-year growth for six months.

British tourists came in at third at 586,000 tourists. The number of tourists increased despite the weakened Pound and Brexit.

Chinese visitors followed with 501,000 tourists, up by 11 percent year-on-year growth.

Oman, Russia and the United States came in next with 499,000 tourists, 375,000 tourists, and 329,000 tourists respectively.

What is the Assessment of Dubai Tourism

According to Helal Saeed Almarri, Dubai Tourism’s director general, “Designed to counter unforeseen macro-economic variables faced by the global travel ecosystem and mitigate impediments associated with over-reliance on any one market or region, we have been long-standing proponents of a globally diversified market strategy – which continues to support our resilience as a sector.”

He adds that tourism assists Dubai’s economic growth and they use a variety of campaigns to ensure Dubai becomes number one for tourists to visit.

Several tourism-related programs have already been completed by Dubai, and some are still being proposed. This included the 2018 announcement regarding the expansion of Dubai International Airport and Al Maktoum International Airport. However, Al Maktoum’s expansion is postponed until further notice.

“Our first half results are a particularly encouraging reflection of our progress towards this ambition and underline the effectiveness of our diversified market outreach with holistic ‘awareness to booking’ cycle content amplification and audience delivery, through a deeply networked ecosystem of global partners, industry stakeholders and government enablers,” Almarri further adds in his statement.

City Info

Interested in getting to the capital of the United Arab Emirates? There are a lot of articles online to help you out in organizing your travel plans. You can check out the Dubai Tourism Board or the Abu Dhabi Tourism Board to find out more about the two cities. You can also check out our article about the Best Places to Stay in Dubai for some extra ideas.

The post Dubai Sees Rise in Tourist Arrivals in 2019 First Half appeared first on Check in Price.