The success of the F1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix over the weekend has led to a surge in interest in the rapidly emerging emirate.

Visitors to Abu Dhabi’s destination website – www.visitabudhabi.ae – rose 107% over last weekend’s three-day Grand Prix with some 32,331 people from 155 countries going on to the site to search for information on the emirate’s range of attractions and hospitality options.

“The number of visitors more than doubled compared to the previous weekend with hotels, airlines and restaurants being the most popular searches,” said Khaled Al Hashemi, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority’s (TCA Abu Dhabi) Digital Committee. “In all we registered 89,315 page views over the weekend – our highest to date.”

Some 2,274 people searched the site for hotel accommodation, 200 people were looking for flights options to the destination and 1,416 were looking for restaurant information.

HE Mubarak Al Nuaimi, International Promotion Manager, Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority with Graham Cooke, President & Founder, World Travel Awards at the “Oscars” of the travel industry

Visitors from 27 countries throughout Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Scandinavia, the Far East and Australia also signed up for the site’s monthly electronic newsletter to stay in touch with all the destination’s happenings. The most prominent age range of the newsletter subscribers was in the 31-40 age group with over two-thirds being male.

Ferrari World - home of the world’s fastest rollercoaser

Visitabudhabi.ae is designed as a one-stop source for destinational information about Abu Dhabi and is available in eight languages – English, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese and Chinese.

Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority was voted “Middle East’s Leading Destination Marketing Campaign” at 2012 World Travel Awards. This follows its victory at World Travel Awards 2011 Grand Final in Qatar when it was voted “Middle East’s Leading Destination Marketing Campaign”.