More Than A Stopover

For so long overshadowed by its fellow emirate Dubai, Abu Dhabi is shedding that ‘underdog’ status after a couple of years of sustained growth and a more focused approach to what it offers its visitors – both business and leisure.

As the capital of the United Arab Emirates and the largest of the seven UAE member emirates, there should be no reason for Abu Dhabi to have to flex its muscles and jostle for position alongside its arguably more high-profile neighbour Dubai.

Yet it does, and there’s no getting away from the perception that Abu Dhabi is the ‘poorer’ UAE cousin, despite its obvious wealth.

But that’s just perception, and Abu Dhabi has spent the last few years working hard at breaking that down. That hard work has paid dividends.

2016 saw Abu Dhabi ranked among the fastest-growing destinations in the world, and the fastest-growing destination in the Middle East, in a report by financial services giant MasterCard.

The Global Cities Index Report recognised the UAE capital’s compound annual growth rate of 19.81% in overnight visitors between 2009 and 2016, which placed the emirate in third place alongside major upcoming destinations such as Osaka in Japan and Chengdu in China, and above established hubs such as Tokyo, Riyadh and Taipei in Taiwan.

The report is produced on an annual basis, and features results gathered by field specialists through extensive research.

Abu Dhabi was one of only three Arabian Gulf cities to make it into the top 50 overall rankings for destination cities in the world, and posted record-breaking results in 2016, with more than four million guests checking into the emirate’s 168 hotel and hotel apartments in the first 11 months of the year.