Dubai aims to treble its annual income from tourism to 300 billion dirhams (€63.47 billion) by 2020, which would involve doubling the number of its hotel rooms, a senior official said.

Tourism is crucial to Dubai’s economy, which had a gross domestic product of around $90 billion last year; it supports the emirate’s large retail industry as well as its hospitality sector.

Occupancy at Dubai’s 599 hotels, which have 80,500 rooms combined, was 78 per cent in 2012 as the number of visitors rose 9.3 per cent from a year ago to 10.16 million, according to data from Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).

Helal Almarri, director-general of the DTCM, told Reuters that the emirate was likely to have more than 160,000 hotel rooms by the end of the decade and aimed to attract 20 million tourists annually by then.

Most decisions to build hotels would be made by private companies. However, the Dubai government is active in supporting growth of the industry by providing infrastructure, marketing the emirate overseas, adjusting visa policies for visitors and expanding the network of the state-owned Emirates airline.