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Abu Dhabi expects to receive over six million visitors in 2025 and this will boost the tourism sector's contribution to GDP to 60 billion UAE dirhams ($16 billion), a tourism official said.
“We expect the number of visitors to the emirate’s hotels this year to exceed six million…this will expand the sector’s contribution to GDP to more than AED 60 billion,” said Saud Al-Housani, Undersecretary of the Department of Culture and Tourism.
He told the semi-official Arabic language daily Al-Ittihad last week that the emirate, which has one of the world’s highest GDP per capita is pushing ahead with plans to reach the targeted tourism sector contribution to GDP of AED90 billion ($24.5 billion) within its 2030 tourism strategy.
Abu Dhabi received nearly three million tourists in the first half of 2025 compared with 2.88 million in the same period of last year, department figures showed.
Hotel revenue in the emirate, which controls over 90 billion barrels of proven crude deposits in the UAE, surged by nearly 20 percent to AED4.3 billion ($1.17 billion) in the first half of 2025 from AED3.6 billion ($one billion) in the first half of 2024.
Hotel revenues are projected to swell by about 13 percent to AED8.6 billion ($2.3 billion) during 2025 from AED7.6 billion ($two billion) during 2024, the department said in a recent report, which showed the sector’s contribution to GDP stood at around AED55 billion ($15 billion) last year.
(Writing by N Saeed; Editing by Sona Nambiar)
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