Salary levels and additional financial benefits are a major factor for expats when deciding where to locate themselves and their families overseas. Many expats opt to relocate to the Middle East, drawn by the lure of tax-free salaries and the possibility of a better quality of life.
The survey results showed that in addition to earning higher salaries, expats located in the Middle East are provided with generous employment packages.
Three key contractual benefits are offered to more expat employees in the Middle East than other expat destinations. Health and medical allowances (70%), annual trips home and airfare allowances (67%), and accommodation allowances (60%) are all more likely to be offered as part of expat contracts in the region.
In Oman, 80% of expats are given flight allowances for trips home, compared to 33% of expats globally who receive this benefit. In Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, 75% and 55% of expats respectively say they are given an accommodation allowance, compared with the global average of 33%.
Now in its eighth year, the Expat Explorer survey is one of the largest independent global expat surveys. Commissioned by HSBC Expat and conducted by a third party research company YouGov, almost 22,000 expats based in over 100 countries were surveyed between March and May 2015.