Abu Dhabi’s 153 hotels and hotel apartments continue their upward momentum in attracting increasing guest numbers with figures, just released by Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority showing some 304,637 people checked into the emirate’s accommodation during April – a 29 per cent rise on the same month last year.

Guest nights rose 26 per cent to 933,809 with occupancy levels lifting ten per cent to 79 per cent and revenues climbing 23 per cent to AED577 million.

“Our immediate challenge is to address the average-length-of-stay which dipped in April by two per cent to 3.07 nights,” said HE Jasem Al Darmaki, deputy director general, TCA Abu Dhabi.

“We are working on initiatives to encourage more products into the market and to step up the international trade and consumer awareness of the destination and its breadth of offering.”

During April, the UK was the best performing overseas market for the destination with 19,010 Britons checking into Abu Dhabi hotels – a 34 per cent rise on last year.

They delivered 84,395 guest nights, which was an increase of 24 per cent and stayed, on average, 4.44 nights – which slipped by seven per cent.

Indians were the next largest buyers of Abu Dhabi accommodation with 18,790 checking into the emirate’s hotels – 35 per cent more than the same month last year.

They accounted for 70,835 guest nights, which is up 24 per cent on last year and they stayed, on average 3.77 nights.

“April was a month when we benefited greatly from the seventh season playoffs of the IPL tournament with many of the games being held in Abu Dhabi and attracting significant audiences from the domestic and Indian markets,” explained Al Darmaki.

Guest numbers from China stormed ahead by 309 per cent in April with some 13,501 Chinese staying in the emirate’s accommodation.

“Much of this is directly accountable to the NU SKIN mega incentives which brought upwards of 6,000 guests to our hotels,” said Al Darmaki.

Guest nights attributable to Chinese in April were 33,505, which is a quadrupling on last year’s performance with average-length-of-stay coming in at 2.48 nights.