At the Atlantis resort in Dubai's Palm Jumeirah, Ashish Mediratta is reviewing photos taken of him and his family hurtling down the slides of the adjoining Aquaventure water park.
Mr Mediratta, 41, who lives in Delhi, visited Dubai for the first time this week, on a four-day break. He is one of a growing number of Indians who have overtaken the British as the biggest tourist group in the emirate, outnumbering visitors from any other country.
"One hears so much about the places to visit in Dubai," said Mr Mediratta, an assistant director of human resources for a telecommunications company, as he emerged from the waterpark with his spectacles still covered with spray. "On the first day we went to Ski Dubai, yesterday we went on a desert safari, and today it was the waterpark," he says.
He said the package holiday cost well under US$1,000 (Dh3,672) per person, including flights, accommodation, visas, meals and excursions.
Like Mr Mediratta, many more Indians are visiting Dubai. As the middle class grows in the subcontinent, the emirate becomes a much more affordable destination.
This resulted in more people visiting Dubai from India than any other country in the first quarter of this year, as it overtook the UK, which had long been Dubai's biggest source market for tourists.
From January to March, 186,478 Indian tourists stayed in Dubai's hotels, a 10 per cent increase on the same time last year, when 169,084 Indians stayed in hotels in the emirate, according to figures from Dubai's Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing.
There are expected to be 50 million outbound Indian tourists each year by 2020, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation, with India's per capita incomeforecast to surge over the next decade. India's economy is predicted to grow by 8.2 per cent this year from a 10.4 per cent increase last year, according to the IMF.
Dubai, which positioned itself as a luxury destination, had long been dependent on wealthy visitors from the UK. But as the destination matured, with more budget accommodation, the global downturn set in and the number of visitors from Europe declined, hoteliers and the travel trade increasingly turned to emerging markets such as India and China to attract holidaymakers.
That strategy has paid off.
"Dubai has grown the inventory of hotels with more budget hotels, more three and four-star properties, and I think that attracts a lot more segments from the Indian subcontinent," said Naeem Darkazally, the vice president of sales and revenue at Rotana. "That's why you can see the compatibility between the destination and the source market of India. We are more affordable and we are more suitable in our offering and everybody is working hard to see how we can entertain and accommodate all the requests of the Indian subcontinent travel agents."
Rotana, which has 14 hotels in Dubai, says it has experienced growth of 15 per cent this year in the number of guests from India.
"Because of this increase we opened an office at the beginning of this month in Mumbai and we have plans to even expand beyond Mumbai, which reflects the importance of this market as it keeps growing," said Mr Darkazally.
Retailers have said there was a surge in the number of shoppers from India during the Dubai Shopping Festival, as Indian tourists were tempted by bargain package deals to Dubai.
The Indian carrier Jet Airways offered Dubai Shopping Festival packages starting at 15,385 rupees (Dh1,255) per person for a three-night stay.
"The demand has gone up," said T Kishore Kumar, a travel agent at Kenmore Air Travels in Chennai. "Cost plays a major role, especially when it comes to families. Dubai's a nice destination to do shopping and it's a family destination, with the desert safaris, city tours, the world's tallest building. A big percentage of the population is Indian … so they can really feel at home."
