The recently concluded Sharjah Hospitality Forum (SHF), organised by the Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Development Authority (SCTDA), highlighted the role of millennials and budget travellers in shaping and driving the sector’s key trends.
The fiftth edition of the hospitality forum brought together all hotel establishments in Sharjah, stakeholders, real estate investors, local government departments, and tour operators to discuss and explore ways to make the emirate’s tourism and hospitality sector more appealing to budget globetrotters and millennials.
The emirate is quickly shaping up into an ideal destination for visitors and tourists, including millennials, from all over the world. The goals set by the Sharjah Tourism Vision 2021, which aims to attract more than 10 million tourists to the emirate by the year 2021, is well on track.
During the forum, a series of panel discussions covered topics ranging from the impact of millennials and the effect of low-cost airlines on the travel and tourism industry among other subjects; the profitability of budget hotels will also be on the agenda.
Khalid Jasim Al Midfa, chairman of SCTDA, also recognised the efforts of the participating panelists for their contributions to the development of innovative solutions addressing the challenges faced by the hospitality industry. “The hosting of the fifth Sharjah Hospitality Forum highlights SCTDA’s keenness to take advantage of market analysis, reports and insights from leading industry experts. We believe that the integration of these findings in our strategy will add significant momentum to the growth of the emirate’s tourism sector, which contributed more than Dh9 billion ($2.45 billion) to the total gross domestic product (GDP) of Dh102.5 billion ($27.9 billion), accounting for 8.8 per cent of the total contribution of tourism and travel sector to the GDP.”