This is a limited-time campaign run by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, and the terms below can change or be withdrawn without much notice. I’ll keep this page current while the offer runs, and if it ends without a replacement, I’ll fold the useful parts into our evergreen guide on How to Invite Family and Friends to Visit Dubai so the practical advice doesn’t just disappear.
If you live in Dubai, you already know the drill. Someone back home says “we should really come visit,” you send them a hundred photos of the Marina at sunset, and eleven months later they still haven’t booked a flight. Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism apparently knows this too, because it just launched a program that pays you, in perks rather than cash, for actually getting your people on a plane.
A Dubai Invite went live on 21 July 2026, and if your overseas family or friends land here between 20 July and 31 October, you can unlock a benefits package worth more than AED 3,000. I’ve gone through the official terms and highlighted the details that are easy to miss. Here’s what the AED 3,000 invite program actually gets you, who it’s genuinely worth the effort for, and where it falls short.
In a hurry?
✓ Not cash.
✓ Worth over AED 3,000 in hotel, dining, attraction, and lifestyle perks.
✓ Your visitor needs to arrive between 20 July and 31 October 2026.
✓ You must register them before they arrive, not after.
✓ Maximum three reward packages per resident.
The Quick Facts, Before You Get Into the Fine Print
• Campaign name: A Dubai Invite, run by the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism
• Guest arrival window: 20 July to 31 October 2026
• Reward: a bundle of hotel, dining, attraction, and lifestyle offers worth more than AED 3,000, not cash
• Who can nominate: any UAE resident or citizen, for guests arriving specifically from overseas
• Limit: up to three reward packages per resident across the whole campaign
• Redemption deadline: most offers valid until 31 December 2026, some partners set earlier cutoffs
What people assume vs. what it actually is:
| What people think | Reality |
| AED 3,000 in cash | No, it’s a package of perks, not a payout |
| A bank transfer or voucher code | No, redemption happens through a reward email |
| Hotel and dining offers | Yes, confirmed as part of the package |
| Attraction tickets or ride credits | Possible, depending on what’s issued |
| Guaranteed for every nomination | No, capped at three packages per resident |
Short on time? If you already know someone visiting Dubai before 31 October, register them now through the nomination page. It only takes about five minutes and there’s no downside if they’re eligible.
What You’re Actually Signing Up For
Start with the part nobody explains clearly: the AED 3,000 is not a bank transfer, a voucher code, or anything you can spend however you like.
It’s a curated bundle of hotel nights, dining offers, attraction tickets, and lifestyle perks contributed by participating brands, and the exact mix depends on availability when your reward gets issued.
Confirmed partners so far include W Dubai Mina Seyahi, The Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi, Le Meridien Mina Seyahi Beach Resort and Waterpark, Melia Desert Palm, IHG Hotels and Resorts, Careem, and Hala.
In practice that means your reward package might be a discounted hotel night at a five-star property, a couple of ride credits, a two-for-one dinner, or a themed attraction ticket, not necessarily all of them at once.
Who Can Nominate, and Who Actually Counts as a Guest
Any UAE resident or citizen can take part, which covers the vast majority of the expat community reading this. The person you’re inviting has to be an overseas visitor, meaning someone flying, sailing, or driving in from outside the UAE specifically to see you, not someone already living here.
A detail that trips people up: each visitor can only be nominated once for the entire campaign. If your cousin is coming to see both you and your sister who also lives in Dubai, whoever submits the nomination form first is the one whose registration counts.
The second submission for the same visitor won’t qualify, so if you’re sharing a guest with another resident, sort out who’s nominating before either of you fills in the form. I’d also flag this for shared family group chats where everyone assumes someone else has already done it and nobody actually has.
How to Register Your Guest, Step by Step
The nomination happens through the official Visit Dubai page, and the process itself takes about five minutes once you have your guest’s travel details.
1. Go to the official A Dubai Invite nomination page and fill in your guest’s name and expected arrival details before they travel. This has to happen before arrival, not after the fact.
2. You can nominate up to five visitors on a single form. Hosting a bigger group, or several separate visits across the campaign window? Submit another form for each additional batch.
3. Your guest enters the UAE any time between 20 July and 31 October 2026, by air, sea, or land. A road trip in from Oman counts exactly the same as a flight into DXB.
4. Verification is automatic against immigration records once your guest arrives. You don’t upload a boarding pass or notify anyone. If the nomination is valid, it gets matched on its own.
5. You’ll get an email with your reward package and redemption instructions within 72 hours of your guest’s verified arrival. DET says packages started going out from August 2026 onward.
The Fine Print That Actually Matters
This is where I want to slow down, because the small print is doing more work here than the headline number suggests.
Each resident can receive a maximum of three reward packages across the whole campaign, no matter how many guests they nominate. If you’re planning to bring your entire extended family through Dubai this autumn in three separate waves, that’s fine, but don’t expect a fourth package on top.
Nominating five visitors on one form also doesn’t mean five separate packages either. It increases your chances of a match, not your total payout.
Visas are entirely on your guest, not the program. A Dubai Invite verifies arrivals and issues rewards, but it has no involvement in visa applications, so if your visitor needs one, that’s a separate process you’ll want to sort well before the trip. If you’re not sure what applies to them, our breakdown of Dubai Visa Types Explained covers the visit-visa routes most overseas guests will fall under.
Most rewards stay valid until 31 December 2026, but individual partners can set their own earlier cutoffs, so read the redemption email properly rather than assuming you’ve got until year-end for everything inside the package.
One more thing worth flagging for bigger households: the cap of three reward packages applies per resident, not per household. If you and your spouse both hold UAE residency and you’re each nominating separate batches of visiting family, you’re effectively working with up to six packages between you, not three. Just make sure you’re not both nominating the same guest by accident, since that duplicate will simply be rejected in favour of whichever submission landed first.
Who Genuinely Benefits, and Is It Worth Your Time?
Here’s my honest read. If your guest is staying a week or more and you were already planning to take them somewhere nice, treat the form as a five-minute task with no downside. Worst case, the reward doesn’t line up with what you’d have booked anyway and you politely skip it.
It gets genuinely useful for residents with a lot of visiting family this year. If your household is expecting parents, siblings, and in-laws across separate trips before Halloween, stacking up to three reward packages across those visits adds real value, especially if any of them land on hotel stays or attraction tickets you were going to buy anyway.
Where I’d say don’t bother: if your guest is only passing through for a day or two, the paperwork and the wait for automatic verification probably isn’t worth it for a reward that might land as a dining discount you won’t have time to use. And if you’re the type who forgets to check email for a week at a time, some partner offers may have their own tighter deadlines once the email lands.
A quick gut-check:
| If your guest is… | Should you register? |
| Staying a week or more | Yes, no downside |
| Visiting family across the season | Yes, worth stacking across visits |
| Scouting Dubai for a possible move | Yes, the hotel savings help fund the trip |
| Just passing through for a day or two | Probably not worth the paperwork |
If This Trip Might Turn Into Something Bigger
A pattern I keep seeing in the DET messaging around this campaign, and one worth naming directly, is that it doubles as a soft pitch for longer term relocation. A subsidised hotel stay is genuinely useful if your visiting relatives are using the trip to scope out whether Dubai could be home for them too, not just a holiday.
If that’s the real reason behind the visit, it’s worth pointing your guests toward the practical side of that decision while they’re here rather than just the tourist itinerary. Our guide on Best Areas and Hotels in Dubai breakdown is useful once they land, since a few days of driving around actual neighbourhoods tells you more than any amount of scrolling.
Questions I’d Actually Ask Before Filling in the Form
My guest already booked flights before I registered them. Does that disqualify the nomination?
No. The program only cares that the nomination is submitted before your guest physically arrives in the UAE, not before they book their flight. Register them as soon as you have a rough arrival date, even if the ticket was bought weeks ago.
My guest is coming on a visa my employer or a UAE-based sponsor already arranged. Does that change anything?
No, the nomination process doesn’t ask how your guest obtained their visa, only that they’re arriving from overseas within the campaign window. Sponsor visas, standard visit visas, and visa-on-arrival nationalities are all treated the same for the purposes of this program.
My guest is staying for six weeks, not a quick holiday. Is there any issue nominating a longer stay?
None that DET has flagged. The reward is tied to the arrival being verified, not the length of the stay, so a longer visit doesn’t reduce or increase what you’re entitled to. It just means you’ll have more time to actually use whatever lands in your reward email.
What Happens Once the Campaign Ends
The nomination window closes on 31 October 2026, and DET hasn’t said whether this becomes a recurring seasonal push or a one-off. If Dubai runs a similar invite scheme again, I’ll update this post rather than write a new one, since there’s no reason to fragment the search traffic across two nearly identical articles.
If nothing similar returns by early 2027, I’ll fold the parts of this guide that stay useful, mainly the visa note and the accommodation tips, into our evergreen guide on inviting family and friends to Dubai, and mark this page as archived so you’re not landing here expecting an active offer that’s long gone.
For now, if you’ve got someone overseas who keeps saying they’ll visit eventually, this is about as good a nudge as Dubai has ever handed you. Send them the flight search, fill in the nomination form the same day, and let the AED 3,000 invite program do the rest of the convincing.
Making the Most of the Hotel and Activity Side
Even setting the AED 3,000 program aside, hosting overseas guests in Dubai usually means one of two things: they stay with you, or they want their own space nearby.
If your reward package doesn’t include accommodation, comparing hotel prices before your guests arrive can save quite a bit. Booking.com usually has the widest choice across Dubai, especially around Downtown, Dubai Marina, and Palm Jumeirah, and many properties offer free cancellation if plans change.
If your visitors are bringing kids, it’s worth planning the itinerary before they land rather than scrambling once they’re here. Our Best Things to Do with Kids in Dubai This Summer] guide covers what’s actually worth the trip out in the heat versus what to skip.
For the attraction side of the package, whether or not your reward includes a specific ticket, GetYourGuide is where I compare prices for things like desert safaris, Burj Khalifa slots, and dhow dinner cruises before committing, since Dubai’s attraction pricing shifts around a fair bit depending on season and demand.
With love,
Dearest Dubai 🤍