Tourism and municipality fees on UAE hotel stays

Why your UAE hotel bill looks higher than the room rate

Book a hotel in Dubai or Abu Dhabi and the total at checkout is often higher than the nightly rate you saw when booking. Part of that gap is UAE VAT, part is a service charge the hotel itself sets, and part is a tourism or municipality fee that goes to the local government. This guide covers that last part only, and it is not the same fee in every emirate.

General consumer information only, not tourism advice. Rules and regulations can change, so check the latest official guidance for your circumstances.

Dubai: the Tourism Dirham

Dubai's fee is called the Tourism Dirham. It is charged per occupied room, per night, and the amount depends on the hotel's official classification, not on the room price you paid. Under Executive Council Resolution No. (2) of 2014, the fee schedule is:

The fee is only charged for the first 30 consecutive nights of a stay. After that, it stops. This cap, and the AED 7-20 range itself, are stated on the UAE government's official u.ae portal as it reads today, as well as in the 2014 resolution's own fee schedule, so both are backed by a primary government source that is current rather than one that is 2014-only.

Abu Dhabi: tourism fee and municipality fee

Abu Dhabi does not use the same structure. Instead of a fixed AED amount, hotels there add two separate percentage-based charges to the total bill: a tourism fee and a municipality fee. Following changes that took effect on 1 September 2023, the tourism fee for hotels was reduced from 6% to 4% of the bill value. The municipality fee, which predates that change, stayed at 4% of the bill value. A separate flat municipality charge of AED 15 per room, per night, that used to apply alongside these percentages was removed at the same time.

Abu Dhabi hotel bills can also include a separate service charge and UAE VAT, which are not the same as the tourism fee or municipality fee, are not set by DCT Abu Dhabi, and are not covered by this guide.

The two emirates are not interchangeable

If you have stayed in Dubai before and assume the same fee and the same logic apply in Abu Dhabi, or the reverse, that assumption will be wrong. Dubai charges a fixed amount set by hotel star rating, with a 30-night cap. Abu Dhabi charges two percentages of the total bill, with no published cap found for this guide. Confirm which emirate you are booking in before estimating the extra cost.

Open question flagged for review

Abu Dhabi's tourism fee and municipality fee rates for hotels, each 4% of the bill as this guide describes them, are backed by the Abu Dhabi Government Media Office's own published account of the Department of Culture and Tourism's 2023 announcement, which is a primary government source for the announcement itself, read directly for this guide rather than taken from a search snippet. That is a step up from relying on news coverage alone, but it is still not a DCT Abu Dhabi fee-schedule page or circular stating the current rate directly. A dedicated check of dct.gov.ae's own circular library and the open web, carried out again for this guide, found circulars on related exemptions and reconciliations (including one that names an Executive Council Resolution governing Abu Dhabi hotel municipality fees) but no circular or page stating the current 4%/4% rate itself. Anyone relying on this for a specific booking should confirm the current rate directly with DCT Abu Dhabi or the hotel. The announcement also does not state whether the rate varies by hotel star rating, or whether any cap on the number of nights it applies exists, so this guide does not claim either way.

Separately, Dubai's 30-night cap on the Tourism Dirham, and the AED 7-20 fee range itself, are both stated on the UAE government's u.ae portal as it reads today (checked again for this guide), which is a current primary government source independent of the 2014 resolution. The 2014 resolution's own text, also checked again for this guide, sets out the fee schedule and amounts but does not itself mention the 30-night cap. No source was found stating directly that the 2014 AED amounts have since been revised, and none was found stating directly that they have not; u.ae's current wording matching the 2014 figures is the only evidence available that they remain unchanged.