More than 60,000 tourists from Saudi Arabia also visited Sharjah during the first half. Following visitor patterns in recent years, the Europeans took the lion's share at 40 percent with some 305,226 tourists from Europe visiting in the first half of 2011. Among the Europeans, Russian tourists led with 24 percent.The Europeans were closely followed by the GCC tourists (29 percent) with some 225,478 people visiting the emirate. The Saudis once again led from the front with 27 percent of GCC visitors coming from the largest country in the group.Arab visitors from other countries across the Middle East formed 10 percent (78,810) whereas the number of Asian visitors stood at 135,764 or 18 percent. The Americans, the Africans and Scandinavian tourists formed 3 percent of the visiting tourist population so far this year.SCTDA Director General Mohamed A. Al-Noman said these numbers were a testament to the growth and resilience of Sharjah's tourism sector and efforts of the SCTDA. "We have been pursuing clearly defined goals and strategies, constantly working to bring visitors from around the globe and bolster the tourist flow into the emirate," he added.The report also shows a 16 percent jump in the number of hotel room nights and hotel apartment room nights from 784,342 last year to 908,309 this year. The number of room nights is a standard method of evaluating the hotel occupancy.With a total number of 768,061 guests staying in the emirate's 106 hotel establishments (46 hotels and 60 hotel apartments), an overall increase of 3 percent in guest numbers was registered. The guests were roughly split between hotels and hotel apartments with 409,285 staying in hotels and 358,776 choosing to stay in hotel apartments.