Qatar tourism sector has got yet another boost. Qatar Development Bank (QDB) on Tuesday announced the launching of Doha Tourism Project on a 79,000 square metre area as a tourist destination on Qatar’s seafront.
The project offers 100 investment opportunities for entrepreneurs.
This move, along with another series of other steps by authorities, will transform Qatar into a favourite destination for tourists across the globe.
Doha Tourism project offers entrepreneurs to obtain shops with a competitive lease of contracts ranging from one to three years.
With various measures taken by the authorities in the past, Qatar’s hospitality market is set to welcome strong inflow of tourists in the coming years. Qatar, in September last year, witnessed the launch of the Next Chapter of its National Tourism Sector Strategy 2030, which charts the next five years of the tourism sector’s growth in Qatar.
The Next Chapter aims to attract 5.6 million visitors to Qatar annually by 2023, double the number which the country welcomed in 2016. It also aims to achieve a 72 percent occupancy rate across all hotel establishments, through a combination of increasing demand and diversifying the country’s tourist accommodation offering.
Also by 2023, the strategy aims to have increased tourism’s direct contribution to Qatar’s GDP from QR19.8bn in 2016 to QR41.3bn, representing a direct contribution to the GDP of 3.8 percent compared to 3.5 percent in 2016.
In August last year, Ministry of Interior, Qatar Tourism Authority and Qatar Airways allowed nationals from more than 80 countries the visa-free entry to the country making it the most open country in the region.
Discover Qatar, the destination management company arm of Qatar Airways, last year signed exclusive partnership agreements with four of the world’s major tour operators in Russia, Italy, Czech Republic and Ukraine, to promote Qatar as a major tourist destination, which will further increase flow of tourist in the country.
Country’s tourism sector has already won several accolades. Recently, Qatar’s hospitality sector further improved its guest experience ranking from first place among the GCC to first place in the Middle East, according to the Guest Experience in the Middle East Report, released by hospitality and travel data providers Olery.
The report monitored and analyzed more than five million online guest reviews over the past 12 months (April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018) from popular sites such as Booking.com and TripAdvisor. Qatar’s score has climbed from 81.7 last year to 84.3, with a 1.2 points gap ahead of second place in the Middle East. It shows that Qatar remains a preferred destination for tourists.
