In Pictures: Last-minute hotel bookings in Dubai will not be easy this week

Don’t place any hope for a last-minute hotel booking at the Palm or Downtown in the final days of 2021. There won’t be any available, with hotels at these two always-in-demand locations recording solid bookings well in advance of the New Year.

If, by chance, there is still the odd room available, be prepared to pay quite a bit. Travel sites show a room at the Downtown could cost anywhere close to Dh4,500 a night the closer one gets to December 31.

On Booking.com, a room at Address Sky View for two is priced at Dh2,899 plus Dh672 in tax per night. The same accommodation on the portal MakeMyTrip.com costs Dh3,399 plus Dh650 in tax.

As for options on the Palm, rates are trending well above Dh2,000 a night on average, ensuring hotels there will have a bumper closing to the year. Yes, New Year in Dubai is proving an irresistible draw for visitors and residents alike, and all of that is coalescing into occupancy rates nudging closer to the 80 per cent mark city-wide. For the last week of 2021, that level should cross 90 per cent comfortably, with the Omicron unlikely to make much of a dent.

If finding a hotel room proves futile, search for the next best option – a holiday home that is still listed or an apart-hotel. Expand the search to cover the whole city rather than a few select locations. You stand a better chance of finding a room this way.

These alternatives to a hotel stay come with options suited for all sorts of budgets, with average pricing at this time of the year in the Dh1,000-Dh1,500 range.

Other emirates are not far behind on rates. On the Almosafer travel portal, five-star hotel rooms in Abu Dhabi are going at between Dh2,000 to Dh3,000, whereas in Dubai, they hover around Dh3,000 to Dh7,500. In Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, hotels have set the stall from Dh2,000.

Those who are looking to celebrate New Year in style, Fairmont, The Palm and the Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi are the ‘real uber-deal’. Their room rates are between a mouth-watering Dh12,500 and Dh16,000 during the last week of December and first week of January.

A tip for travellers looking to book your accommodation or flight tickets: use the Google incognito tab to look up choices and compare prices. If you search in your browser, each time the page is refreshed, the offered rates will shoot up. This is because websites use cookies to track the routes that are repeatedly searched and then increase rates accordingly.

This New Year, we move towards the latest version of new reality. The past two years have been challenging, let’s celebrate the new one - the right way - in the UAE.