Dubai tourism opens up holiday home regulations

Dubai’s Department of Tourism & Commerce Marketing recently updated its regulations surrounding holiday homes.

The move was to become more competitive with significant amendments positively impacting individual owners and bringing in greater transparency, safety, standardisation and competitiveness.

Under the new resolution, private home owners can apply for a holiday home licence without the need to go through an approved Dubai Tourism operator, providing they meet all criteria.

In addition, tenants who are renting a property can also lease their accommodation as a holiday home with a short-term permit, providing they submit a no objection certificate from their landlord and meet all Dubai Tourism-specified requirements.

Under the new initiative, individual owners and authorised tenants do not need to go through detailed licence requirement submissions as is the case for professional operators. Dubai Tourism has upgraded its application portal to facilitate new licence applications, and will shortly allow for all e-commerce payments to be done digitally.

The move is part of Dubai’s objective to further diversify and increase its hospitality offering in line with its Tourism Vision to attract 20 million visitors per year to the emirate by 2020.

Khaled Bin Touq, executive director, Tourism Activities & Classification Sector, Dubai Tourism, said: “Through implementation of streamlined processes and a conducive and supportive regulatory environment, underpinned by a strong digitised administrative environment in line with Dubai’s Smart Government initiatives, we continue to put in place necessary market conditions to stimulate growth of the tourism sector in a safe, secure and controlled manner.”

The new regulations also detail all requirements that home owners need to meet to apply for a licence, including quality standards, amenities, health and safety, insurance necessities, code of conduct and wider community integration.