Abu Dhabi speeds up holiday home licensing with new digital system

Dubai: Abu Dhabi has introduced a series of updates to its regulatory system for holiday homes, aimed at simplifying licensing procedures, accelerating approval times and improving overall compliance across one of the emirate’s fastest-growing tourism segments.

The enhanced system, developed by the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), provides a unified digital platform that allows owners, operators and sector partners to manage permits and monitor compliance more efficiently. The updates form part of DCT Abu Dhabi’s wider digital transformation efforts under Tourism Strategy 2030, which seeks to boost efficiency, transparency and investor confidence in the emirate’s tourism accommodation ecosystem.

The latest platform upgrades significantly reduce administrative processes for holiday home licensing. According to DCT Abu Dhabi, the system offers a more flexible, digital-first model that aligns with the emirate’s long-term objective of building a transparent and tech-enabled tourism environment.

“The holiday homes sector continues to experience robust growth, driven by greater transparency and enhanced efficiency and an increasingly user-friendly operating environment," said Hamad Mohammed Alsudain, Executive Director of Support Services at DCT Abu Dhabi. "These advances further strengthen Abu Dhabi’s position as a world-class tourism destination.

The new system also integrates with government entities and key tourism stakeholders to ensure revenue management, monitoring and data sharing are seamless and fully compliant with Abu Dhabi’s governance frameworks.

DCT Abu Dhabi said the upgraded system introduces improved transparency tools and compliance measures to maintain high operational and safety standards across all registered holiday homes. Enhanced monitoring and inspection functions allow the department to track performance in real time while ensuring that operators adhere to regulatory requirements.

The department emphasised that the system has been designed to meet Abu Dhabi’s strict data protection policies, ensuring that sensitive operational and customer information is managed securely and with full integrity.

The new updates build on enhancements made in 2024, when DCT Abu Dhabi integrated the Holiday Home System with the Department of Municipalities and Transport and introduced a self-inspection feature that reduced permit issuance time to under six hours.

The latest phase represents a step forward in the emirate’s effort to fully digitise tourism services while supporting the expansion of the short-term accommodation sector, which has seen strong demand from both domestic and international travellers.