Dubai looks beyond the next record

Over the past few years, Dubai has learned that a single record is no longer enough on its own.

19.59 million international visitors in one year. That sounds impressive, and it is. In 2025, Dubai welcomed more international visitors than ever before, for the third year in a row. Yet the ambition now goes further than setting a new visitor record every year.

The question Dubai is asking itself today is how to keep those visitors connected to the city for longer. Someone who comes to Dubai for a three-day holiday spends money on a hotel, restaurants and attractions. Someone who returns after that holiday to start a business, work remotely, buy a home or settle in Dubai with their family has a far greater impact on the economy. That is exactly the direction in which Dubai wants to develop its tourism strategy.

Issam Kazim, CEO of the Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing, describes every visitor as a potential future resident, entrepreneur or investor. In that view, tourism is the first introduction to everything Dubai has to offer. It is an interesting shift.

Someone travelling to Dubai for the first time today may come for the sun, a hotel or a weekend away. During that trip, they also discover a city where it is relatively easy to start a business, where international companies are setting up, and where the property market is an important part of the economy. A tourist today can become an entrepreneur tomorrow, and an entrepreneur can later become a resident.

That model fits the way Dubai has developed in recent years. The city does not want to depend on a single sector or a single type of visitor. Its economy keeps broadening, and its international appeal is being built from several directions at once. The tourism figures reflect this. Dubai welcomed almost 20 million international visitors in 2025, while Dubai International Airport handled a record 95.2 million passengers in the same year. This keeps the city one of the most important international gateways between Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Perhaps even more important is where those visitors come from.

Dubai deliberately avoids depending on any one market. The city works with more than 80 different source markets, so a downturn in one region can be partly offset by growth from other parts of the world. That makes Dubai less vulnerable and, at the same time, more international.

This is where the story becomes relevant for property.

A city that keeps attracting new visitors needs more than hotel rooms. Demand also grows for homes, offices, restaurants, shops, schools and all the other facilities people need when they stay longer or eventually decide to settle. That is one of the reasons why the property market in Dubai is hard to separate from the wider development of the city.

How many apartments are sold today is only part of the picture. The bigger question is how many people will come to see Dubai as the place where they live or work in the years ahead. Notably, according to Dubai’s own authorities, the property market remains one of the indicators that reflects confidence in the economy. In its wider strategy towards 2033, Dubai also continues to focus on economic growth, international companies and talent.

That does not make every property project a good investment.

Precisely because Dubai is growing so fast, the choice of location, developer and project matters more and more. Buying an apartment because it looks attractive, or because a seller promises an appealing return, is a different thing from investing with a clear strategy.

Anyone looking at Dubai today should therefore look past the skyline. Much of the real development happens behind it, in population growth, the expansion of new districts, the arrival of businesses, international connectivity, and the way Dubai is trying to turn tourists into long-term users of the city.

That may well be the most interesting development of all. Dubai wants more from its visitors than a holiday.

Dubai wants you to come back.

First as a visitor, and perhaps later as an entrepreneur, investor or resident. When a city succeeds in connecting those different roles, the meaning of property changes too. A home then represents more than a building. It becomes a stake in a city that a growing number of people see as their second home, or even their new home. For Belgian and Dutch investors, that is exactly why it matters to look beyond current property prices and focus on the development behind them.

Dubai is already preparing for its next phase, where sustainable growth counts for more than the next record.

That makes the coming years especially interesting to follow.

Changes from a word-for-word translation

The meaning is unchanged. I adjusted a few lines so the English follows the brand writing rules:

• Contrast lines: “niet X, maar Y” and “niet alleen… maar ook” are each written as one direct statement.
• “Integendeel.”: dropped from the bold line, because it reads as a dramatic fragment in English.
• Stacked fragments: “Een toerist kan daardoor morgen een ondernemer worden. En een ondernemer…” and “Eerst als bezoeker. Daarna misschien…” are each joined into a single sentence.
• Closing bold line: “Niet naar het volgende record, maar naar duurzame groei” is rewritten as one statement with the same message.