Tourist numbers to Dubai from countries with weak currencies dropped significantly last year, figures from the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) showed.
Helal Saeed Almarri, the director general of Dubai Tourism, acknowledged the difficulties the strong dollar posed in attracting tourists given that the dirham is pegged to the greenback and said the authority was boosting efforts to make visiting the emirate easier.
“With an expensive dollar, we are focused on innovative value creation and superlative experience delivery as fundamental to future growth,” Mr Almarri said.
The Bloomberg US Dollar Index, which tracks a basket of 10 leading currencies, rose 2.8 per cent last year, touching highs not reached since the gauge was created in 2005.
So far this year, however, the dollar has given up much of those gains, dropping 2 per cent amid uncertainty over the effect that the US president Donald Trump’s policies may have on the world’s largest economy.
Mr Almarri said Dubai Tourism was working to attract more visitors from frontier markets and the government was working on streamlining visa requirements and easing barriers to entry for tourists all over the world.
Visitors from Nigeria, Australia and Egypt experienced the biggest declines last year.
The number of tourists from Nigeria fell by 20 per cent to 160,000 last year compared with 201,000 in 2015. Australian visitors dropped 10 per cent to 283,000 versus 315,000 in the same time frame, while tourists from Egypt slipped by 5 per cent to 291,000 from 305,000 in the same time frame, the authority said.
Nigeria’s and Australia’s economies are heavily reliant on natural resources and have been dented by the collapse in oil and commodities over the past few years.
The woes of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, have been compounded by the central bank’s unwillingness to freely float the currency.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s central bank floated the currency in November – making the Egyptian pound the second biggest loser against the US dollar in 2016 after the West Samoan currency.
The Egyptian pound slipped by 56.8 per cent against the US dollar in 2016, while the Nigerian naira fell by 36.7 per cent versus the greenback.
The Australian dollar, however, only fell by a marginal 1.1 per cent against the dollar last year.
mkassem@thenational.ae
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