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.
