Dubai International Airport’s hotel offers a different experience for both travellers and residents

Gulf News

Dubai International Airport’s 400-room hotel is working its way to be something more than a stopover for transit passengers through Dubai.  Read the full story here: Dubai International Airport’s 400-room hotel is working its way to be something more than a stopover for transit passengers through Dubai.   See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km

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00:00Dubai International is a fully airside transit hotel for Emirates customers here at DXB.

00:09We have 400 hotel rooms across three concourses here, serving Emirates customers primarily,

00:14but also FlyDubai and other passengers who are using the airport.

00:19The hotel is very popular with intercontinental travellers from India to Europe, from Australia

00:27to North America, so we have a very common number of frequent flyers who use the hotel,

00:33but it's accessible to everybody. We have passengers who book directly with us on our

00:38website or through our call centre, and also through walk-ins as well, people who just

00:43see the hotel lobby when they're walking through Dubai International Airport and choose to

00:46come in here.

00:48People who travel through the airport are very familiar with it as a transit hotel as

00:52part of the journey, but for residents in Dubai, probably they're not familiar with

00:56it because it's not part of their journey. So for residents this year, we've decided

01:01to launch a promotion to encourage people to check in early, up to 12 hours before your

01:06flight depending on your destination, and to check in your bags, come airside, check

01:11into the hotel, and if you're flying at an antisocial hour, it's possible to come in

01:16here, shop at Dubai Duty Free, stay at the hotel and wake up literally at the gate with

01:21a very short walk to your gate in the morning.

01:23Yeah, so Dubai International Hotel has been in existence since 2000, and we originally

01:27opened in Concourse C, which was known as the Sheikh Rashid Terminal, and when Concourse

01:31B opened, where we are today, back in 2008, we opened more rooms, and now we have 400

01:38rooms which include Concourse A, which are available to the public on a daily basis.

01:42This year we've been rated Traveller's Choice by TripAdvisor, which we're very proud of

01:46because this is based on up to 10,000 independent customer reviews, so these are customers who

01:51have stayed with us, and we have consistently, based on the quality and the quantity of reviews

01:57we've received, had a rating of more than 4.5 out of 5, and for that we received the

02:02Traveller's Choice Award from TripAdvisor, so we're very, very proud of that.

02:06We operate as a fully functional hotel, so we are rated a 5-star hotel by Dubai Economy

02:12and Tourism, and we are under the umbrella of Dubai Municipality as well from a hygiene

02:17and standards perspective, and our hotel rooms include ensuite, they include all of the amenities

02:22of a hotel that you would expect, any hotel in the world including room service, and other

02:27amenities such as spa and health club treatment as well, so we operate as a hotel, but as

02:32a fully airside transit hotel.

02:35So since last year, our business has grown by 15%, we are 12% ahead of 2019, so we're

02:41ahead of pre-pandemic levels here at the hotel, and we're forecasting a very positive

02:45Q4 for us this year, and the outlook for the next year is quite positive as well.

02:50We have a lot of business traffic and delegates coming through here as well, so which are

02:54either official delegations from countries who are here for Co-op, we had the same phenomenon

02:59during Expo as well during that period for Dubai, so it depends really on groups coming

03:05through, but we're seeing a lot more group travel and official group travel coming through

03:08the hotel as well this year, which is separate from our leisure and business travel as well.

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