Ras Al Khaimah has reaffirmed its position as the UAE’s fastest growing tourism destination for international travellers following increased year-on-year visitor numbers during the first quarter of 2017.

New figures reported by Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority, which develops the emirate’s tourism infrastructure and initiates its domestic and overseas promotions, ahead of Arabian Travel Market 2017 reveal that overall visitor arrivals to the emirate in quarter one grew by 8.3 per cent year-on-year.

With domestic tourism still the single largest contributor to Ras Al Khaimah’s tourism performance, the record arrivals in the first quarter of the year were largely driven by growth from international source markets, which recorded an 11.3 per cent year-on-year rise over the first three months of the year.

“This year has started extremely strong for Ras Al Khaimah, and we attribute the significant year-on-year increase in international visitors to our strategic overseas promotional activities,” said Haitham Mattar, chief executive, RAKTDA.

“During 2016, we implemented a multi-faceted approach in our trade and consumer-led promotions, which have yielded increases from all our core international markets and emerging destinations.

“We work very closely with a number of travel partners across various markets, and through their support, we anticipate prolonged visitor growth as we edge closer to our one million visitor target by the end of 2018.”

During quarter one, hotels across the emirate registered average occupancy of 75.5 per cent, an increase of 6.2 per cent over the same period last year.

Similar results were posted across all key hotel performance indicators, with RevPAR increasing by 2.5 per cent and room revenue swelling by 9.3 per cent.

Ras Al Khaimah’s core international source markets continue to deliver increasing numbers of visitors.

Russian arrivals increased 141 per cent per cent year-on-year in quarter one, while the UK reported gains of 35 per cent.