DUBAI — Tourists suffer long transfer
delays and room shortages especially when the city hosts multiple
events, travel agents and hotels have said.
Lama
Desert Tours and Cruises operations director Avtar Singh said it is a
well-known fact that the Dubai International Airport is a busy airport.
More than 34 million passengers passed through its doors in 2007, and
expansion works and developments were progressing rapidly.
Additionally,
visitors to Dubai had to deal with traffic jams and long check-in times
that combined to add several hours to a tourist’s journey.
“There’s a long waiting period especially for late night arrivals,” Singh said.
“Hotel
check-in or check-out can take two hours with the loading and unloading
of bags and allocation of rooms. At the airport and travel (to hotel)
it could take two to three hours.”
Despite this, Singh said he believed it had not deterred tourists from travelling to Dubai.
Al
Rais Travel’s inbound travel director Sayed Al Mansoub said their
clients had noticed delays of three hours transferring from the airport
to their hotel room.“People are also charged for the transfer now —
between Dh100 and Dh160,” Al Mansoub said. “And Terminal 2 is also
busy.”
However, hotels disputed transfer and check-ins took as long as travel agents said.
Dusit Dubai concierge Valentino Delacruz said guest transfers from the airport to the hotels usually took 20 minutes.
“In heavy traffic it takes 40 to 45 minutes, may be an hour but in light traffic it can be ten minutes,” he said.
Delacruz
said express service guests were checked-in within six or seven minutes
while regular guests were checked-in within 15 minutes.
Dubai
Shopping Festival has long been established as a major tourist
attraction and most hotels had said earlier that they expected full
occupancy during the time.
Hussein
Hashim, general manager of Al Murooj Rotana Hotel & Suites, had
said then that he expected the occupancy rate to reach between 92 per
cent and 95 per cent during DSF.
There were other events concurring with DSF, including the Arab Health 2008.
Singh
said the agency was booking rooms six months in advance to ensure
accommodation for their clients. “But you can expect a lot of walk-ins
and there’s a lack of hotel rooms,” Singh said.
“There were 3,000 arrivals for DSF just this week. And there’s Arab Health as well.”
The
Metropolitan Hotel reservations manager Vijay Kumar said the hotel
usually averaged 75 to 80 per cent occupancy during this season.
However during Arab Health 2008 last week, the hotel which had been sold out for months ahead was forced to turn down walk-ins.
“The
situation arises when there is a big exhibition or conference as well
as DSF that people find it difficult to get rooms,” Kumar said.
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