There’s delightful news for the tourism sector. Tuesday’s announcement of the Hamad International Airport (HIA) floating tenders for major expansion works underlines Qatar’s rapidly growing tourism sector that has broken a significant record with a high number of visitors to the country in just three months and the subsequent revenue generated by the 2022 FIFA World Cup hosts.
Qatar has welcomed nearly 600,000 visitors - a 10 percent increase from same time last year - in the first quarter of the year, an encouraging number in every sense. The tenders for HIA’s expansion - the third one since it launched operations in 2014 - will see work commencing in the second or third quarter this year.
Qatar, however, has assured HIA’s carefully charted expansion plans will be completed well before the country gets ready to welcome the visitors for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The latest HIA expansion plans also include the launch of the new Airport City that has been designed to provide investment opportunities for the business community - in the country and from overseas - besides the creation of a free trade zone and construction of new hotels.
All of this will create an engaging business buzz in the country that is fast becoming one of the major players in the region’s tourism sector. The HIA, the Doha Port - that welcomed a whopping 140,000 visitors on 44 ships in the first quarter this year - along with Qatar Airways are the major players in converting Qatar’s ambitious tourism drive into reality.
From the days of being just labelled as a desert stop-over, Qatar has in the last decade quickly turned into a seven-night destination thanks to the infrastructure development at HIA, the Doha Port and in the country overall. Billions of dollars have been spent to model Qatar as a tourist destination. The latest figures just show exactly how well the plans have been completed.
Tourism is high on Qatar’s agenda to forge new business partnerships with the outside world and to attract investments in the country ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The rapidly growing hotel industry is facilitating the country’s agenda-driven aim of welcoming tourists with open arms.
Akbar Al Baker, the Secretary General of the Qatar National Tourism Council (QNTC), on Tuesday underlined the growing influence of tour operators in the country. Tour guides, according to Al Baker, are making a difference now that Qatar has trained and put to use more than 130 licensed tour guides to add muscle to the growing tourism industry in the country.
‘Discover Qatar’and ‘Summer in Qatar’ are just two of the more popular campaigns to drive the tourist movement in the right direction.
Let’s have more of the same, please!
