Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) and Airbnb, the world’s leading community-driven hospitality company, have inked a deal to help promote responsible hosting to help grow and diversify tourism in the emirate.
The move follows the introduction of enhanced regulations last month that make obtaining a ‘holiday home’ license more streamlined for individual tenants and homeowners who want to rent their homes to guests. Under the agreement, Airbnb will cooperate with Dubai Tourism on preventing breaches of the regulation by informing all host members of the Dubai Tourism regulations via its website and
through email reminders of the rules. The two parties will also explore joint marketing and promotional activations for Dubai as a tourism destination.
The MoU agreement lists that both parties will work together to help grow and diversify tourism in Dubai, and promote innovative forms of tourism and that Airbnb will raise awareness on the positive impacts of the Airbnb community by sharing aggregated, anonymised data about short term rental hosts. H.E Helal Saeed Almarri, director general, Dubai Tourism, said: “In keeping with global demand trends and a highly digitised market place for key enablers of tourism infrastructure, we are pleased to partner with Airbnb, a pioneer in this space, to help promote diverse accommodation options to our visitors in a safe, secure and controlled manner. This not only lets us be more competitive as a tourism destination but also speaks to our ability as government to drive demand led policy making and embrace innovation to further our proposition. Ultimately visitor experience is at the heart of initiatives undertaken by Dubai Tourism and this is one such example of how we continue to partner with the private and public sector to deliver against our destination promise.”
In line with the MoU, Dubai Tourism last month updated its regulations surrounding holiday homes to become more competitive, with the most significant amendments positively impacting individual owners and tenants. Under the new resolution, private home owners can apply for a holiday home license without the need to go through an approved Dubai Tourism operator providing they meet all criteria, as can tenants who are renting a property.
