Last year, the United Arab Emirates introduced a new visa policy that allows Russian tourists to receive the visa on arrival. According to Khaleejtimes, the new policy directly resulted in a robust 6.4% increase in DWC’s traffic. The annual traffic report issued by operator Dubai Airports recorded that DWC welcomed 904,940 passengers during 2017 compared to 850,633 passengers recorded in 2016.
The surge in traffic on Eastern European routes, which recorded a spike of 168%, to take the total number of passengers during the year to 452,631. Russia emerged as the single largest contributor to traffic from Eastern Europe with a growth of 955.4% totaling 279,100 passengers in 2017.
In a similar manner, Germany was the single largest contributor in the region with 41,671 passengers. Airlines that were top traffic contributors at DWC during the year include Wizz Air, Azur Air, Royal Flight, Condor, and Ural Airlines.
Paul Griffiths, the CEO of Dubai Airports, stated ” DWC will have much more to offer to our airline partners and customers in 2018 as the project to expand the capacity of the passenger terminal building from five million to 26 million passengers per annum is nearing completion”