Dubai: Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) announced the results of a satisfaction and happiness survey on Tuesday. The survey is aimed at enhancing Dubai’s tourism offerings.The survey is an advanced mechanism to measure and track the satisfaction levels of visitors to the city with various aspects of the destination offering.
“As part of its wider Dubai International Visitors Survey (DIVS), this module is designed to scrutinise the end-to-end tourist experience and how likely a visitor of each nationality is to positively endorse Dubai as a must-visit destination, across the core destination pillars and services that are likely to most impact their travel,” Dubai Tourism said in a statement.
The findings show that 98 per cent of international respondents across the cross section of nationalities rated their travel experience in Dubai in 2015 at a 7 or higher, with over 61 per cent giving a score of 9 and higher.
Only ratings at 9 and 10 on a 10-point scale are considered to be genuinely ‘happy’ and hence ‘active advocates’ of the city or its specific offering, while ratings of 7 and 8 are considered to be ‘satisfied’ and hence ‘likely promoters’. Anything at a rating of 6 or lower in this survey is earmarked as an area for further development, ensuring extremely high standards are maintained and strived for, Dubai Tourism said.
In terms of the likelihood of the traveller to ‘recommend’ their Dubai visit to their friends and family, 97.5 per cent of respondents indicated that they were ‘likely promoters’, of which over 60 per cent would be ‘active advocates’ for the Dubai brand.
“The findings from these visitor surveys will continue to inform Dubai Tourism’s ongoing efforts to deliver a superior end-to-end destination experience to ensure visitors become loyal repeat travellers, supported by synchronised private and public partnership projects at all stages of the visitor journey,” stated Issam Kazim, CEO of the Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing.
Topping the ‘happiness’ charts were the quality of experiences around beach and marine activities as well as the hotels and accommodation.
Registering high degrees of satisfaction on the comprehensiveness of the offering were shopping and the gastronomy proposition. Family offerings, adventure sport activities and the business related proposition remained strong.
Earmarked as an area for enhancement based on respondents’ experience — in terms of both raising awareness and evolving the offering — was culture, art and heritage.
Meanwhile, the survey showed high satisfaction levels with the city’s safety and security.
Dubai Tourism also released a number of tourism metrics, trends and insights across the destination as part of the wider 2015 Annual Visitor Report.
In terms of visitation, leisure visitors continued to make up the lion’s share in 2015 at 64.9 per cent, up 10 per cent over the previous year.
Families now make up more than half of all travellers visiting the city, whilst individual travellers constituted 29 per cent of the overall base, remaining almost flat year-on-year.
Business traveller growth also remained steady despite challenging economic conditions, representing close to 20 per cent of all visitors to the emirate in 2015.
Those visiting friends and families/or relatives (VFR) represented 13.9 per cent of all visitors in 2015.
The average length of stay at 7.2 was primarily led by families travelling on leisure visits, which continues to inform the long-term hotel accommodation offering. Those staying in hotels and hotel apartments made up nearly three-quarters of all accommodation choices for visitors in 2015.
The survey also analysed visitation at key attractions across the city in 2015. It showed that Downtown Dubai remained the city’s most iconic destination. The Dubai Mall was the most visited attraction with 86 per cent of all international travellers going in 2015. The adjacent Dubai Fountain came in second place at 67 per cent, while Burj Khalifa saw over 30 per cent international visitation.
