Dubai is such a magnet for both business visitors and tourists that our hotel rates are amongst the highest in the world. In spite of that the hotels regularly run at over 90% occupancy and very often at 100%.

So it’s good news for visitors that by the end of 2008 we should have an additional 22,000 rooms available, an increase of about 50%. When they come on-stream it should help to bring prices down – or at the very least, allow people to visit when they want to because rooms are available. I’ve had several visitors who’ve had to change their dates because there are simply no rooms to be had when they wanted them.

We currently have about 40,000 rooms in 415 hotels and hotel apartments, covering categories from budget to super luxury. In 2006 we had, according to the Dept. of Tourism & Commerce Marketing, 6.5 million guests, a number that could have been larger if we had more rooms available.

This year twenty-two new hotels are due to open, plus seven new hotel apartments, and they will add over 10,000 rooms to the inventory.

Looking further ahead, we have the Bawadi project in Dubailand scheduled to open by 2016 – and that’s only six years away.The US$27 billion project has 31 hotels planned with 29,000 rooms, including what will be the world’s largest hotel, Asia-Asia, with 6,500 rooms.

DTCM predicts 15 million tourists in 2015 and by then we should have 520 hotel properties.