South Africa is set to become a key market for the Taj Palace Hotel Dubai in 2012 as the hotel records a 31% increase year to date in guests since 2010.

The hotel attributes this rise in business to the increase in flights between Dubai and the major cities of Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg.

“The fact that Emirates has direct flights between South Africa and Dubai means that accessing the city is now easier for many travellers making Dubai an attractive holiday destination. There are two flights daily from Cape Town so we see a lot of arrivals from this city, particularly around the holiday periods” said Mohamed Anwar director of sales and marketing at Taj Palace Dubai.

The sales team recently attended a roadshow organised by the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing to the key cities of South Africa and say the response was better than expected with an anticipated increase of 15% in market share for this year.

According to Anwar, over 45% of business to the hotel is from the leisure segment and majority of the visitors are families travelling during the holidays. 

“The leisure traveller is our key focus from this market because they prefer to book apartments and ours are some of the largest in the city” said Anwar. “These visitors also prefer to be close to the main shopping areas, and the strong South African Indian community is very loyal to Taj as a brand”.

Dubai is also a convenient stopover for South Africans travelling to Makkah with many visitors adding one or two nights to their trip to see the city. According to Anwar pilgrims from South Africa tend to travel all year round providing much needed business during low periods.

The Taj Palace is a well established city family leisure hotel and is renowned for its large rooms. The standard room category offers 61 square metres of luxury. It also has a number of apartments which are particularly attractive for families during school holidays when they need more space.