Dubai to overtake London for tourist arrivals by 2025

Dubai is projected to overtake the UK capital London for tourist arrivals by 2025 after seeing the highest growth rate in the top 10 of this year’s Euromonitor Top 100 City Destinations Ranking.

The emirate climbed one place to stand sixth on this year’s list with projected arrivals growing 11.2 per cent from 14.9 million last year to 16.56 million in 2017.

Further visitor growth in the years to come will see Dubai attract 20.27 million arrivals in 2020 and 26.78 million in 2025, according to the ranking.

Read: Dubai sees 7.5% increase in tourists in first 9 months of 2017

In contrast London, which stood third in this year’s ranking after seeing a 3.4 per cent increase in arrivals to 19.84 million, is expected to see 22.33 million in 2020 and 25.8 million in 2025.

Dubai also led the Middle East and Africa this year, ahead of Makkah with 9.8 per cent growth to 8.74 million arrivals and Johannesburg with 7.2 per cent growth to 5.53 million arrivals.

“Dubai seems insulated from all the turmoil that is going on around it. The city’s tourism industry is booming, and it is adopting new technologies at a rapid pace,” Euromonitor said.

“The Dubai Tourism Vision 2020 aims to welcome 20 million visitors by the year 2020, when it will host Expo2020. Euromonitor International’s forecast shows this target is set to be met.”

This year’s ranking was led by Hong Kong, which saw a 3.2 per cent reduction in arrivals to 25.69 million.

It was followed by Bangkok with 9.5 per cent growth to 23.27 million, while Singapore stood in fourth with 6.1 per cent growth to 17.61 million and Macau fifth with 5.9 per cent growth to 16.29 million.

Hong Kong is expected to still lead the ranking by in 2020 and 2025 with 31.23 million and 44.05 million arrivals respectively.

Bangkok is also projected to remain in second place with 28.50 million arrivals and 39.88 million arrivals, while Singapore will climb from 21.26 million in 2020 to 30.19 million in 2025 to take third.