US, Aug. 16 -- For years, Dubai appeared to have solved one of the hardest problems in global tourism: how to manufacture a destination, connect it to almost every major city in the world and persuade millions of people to come.

Then the planes stopped coming to Dubai The contrast with 2025 could hardly be greater. Dubai welcomed a record 19.59 million international overnight visitors last year, its third consecutive record, while average hotel occupancy reached 80.7 percent. The emirate ended the year with more than 154,000 hotel rooms.

In 2026, the war in Iran changed the equation.

The most revealing statistic may be hotel occupancy. According to CoStar data reported by Skift, Dubai occupancy plunged to just 19.6 percent in mid-Marc...