Dubai airport to serve 4.4 million passengers this festive season

Dubai Airports has raised its passenger forecast for this holiday season and expects the city’s main airport to welcome 4.4 million travellers between December 15 and 31, with an average daily traffic of 258,000.

Dubai International (DXB) is preparing for an exceptional spike in guest numbers, with an estimated 279,000 passengers on December 22, the busiest day for the airport.

“We welcomed new airlines and additional flights at DXB at the start of the winter to help attract a growing number of visitors to Dubai and connect them to even more cities,” said Essa Al Shamsi, senior vice president of Terminal Operations at Dubai Airports.

“With the holiday spirit in full swing, we are prepared for this travel peak – your passport to a memorable experience. Backed by a state-of-the-art airport operations control centre, our dedicated teams across DXB are committed to making the festive travel experience cheerful and bright.

Over the years, Dubai has cemented its position as a popular destination during the winter and DXB is expecting a surge in arrivals during the last two weekends of the year, with half a million passengers set to arrive over six days December 22 to 24 as well as December 29 to 31.

DXB will host a series of activities across Terminals 1, 2 and 3, including a 3D photo opportunity in a giant snow globe, visits from a range of festive performers who will be handing out gifts, and the chance for little travellers to meet Santa.

Dubai Airports eyes super-hub status

Meanwhile, Dubai Airports said DXB welcomed 22.9 million passengers in the third quarter, the highest quarterly traffic since 2019, and annual passenger traffic is forecasted to reach 86.8 million in 2023, revised upwards from 85 million passengers in August.

The airport operator is expecting record-breaking numbers to continue in Q4 2023 and 2024.

The company is adding more passenger processing capacity and aircraft stands to meet the growing demand at DXB amid plans to relocate to Dubai World Central (DWC), also known as Al Maktoum International Airport, once the airport’s capacity hits 120 million.

“We are always re-engineering every single element of capacity that we’ve got and there are two ways of looking at this. We either build more capacity or optimise the process to get more capacity out of what we’ve already got,” Paul Griffiths, Dubai Airports CEO told Gulf Business during the Dubai Airshow.

With a current capacity of 100 million passengers annually at DXB, the deployment of innovative technology, expansion and refurbishment of existing infrastructures and more efficient use of its space and resources is expected to propel the airport’s capacity to 120 million.

Read: Paul Griffiths on Dubai Airports’ bold journey to super-hub status