Skift Take
Fancy 48 hours in Doha? Qatar Airways thinks you’ll.
Qatar is now trying to enhance its standing as a chief stop-over hub to spice up its tourism sector.
Doha’s largest airport, Hamad Worldwide, connects to greater than 170 locations, making it the second-most linked airport within the area behind Dubai Worldwide. The nation’s flagship provider, Qatar Airways is cashing in on this with a brand new stop-over scheme.
The brand new packages will take away the necessity for separate reservations and allow vacationers within the area to streamline their journey plans by a brand new and improved reserving course of that comes with flight and lodge bookings in a single itinerary.
It permits vacationers to remain in Qatar for so long as 4 nights, availing sponsored packages for lodges and actions. It operates by Qatar Airways’ vacation subsidiary: Qatar Holidays.
Qatar’s tourism authority presents transit visas to vacationers for round $27, and presents devoted excursions for vacationers stopping over within the Arab state for six hours or extra.
Most of the Center East carriers supply comparable stop-over applications to assist tourism. Dubai’s Emirates, Turkish Airways and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad all have presents for vacationers, with Etihad providing free nights’ keep for vacationers utilizing the airline; and Emirates just lately saying a brand new promotion for as much as two free nights in Dubai.
Qatar Seems to be to Profit From Its Aviation Sector
Qatar’s wider tourism sector has not benefitted from the World Cup as officers had hoped.
This month, Qatar Airways Group reported the strongest monetary efficiency in its 27-year historical past, saying income of 6.1 billion Qatari Riyals ($1.7 billion) for the 2023/24 monetary yr. The airline had a complete income $22.2 billion, representing a rise of $1.3 billion over the earlier yr.
For the fiscal yr, the airline had round 40 million passengers. However Qatar itself had one-tenth of that in worldwide tourism: 4 million in 2023.
For comparability, Dubai’s Emirates Airline had 51.9 million passengers final yr, however Dubai additionally welcomed 17.15 million worldwide vacationers in that point.
As Skift beforehand reported, Qatar is relying closely on occasions to maintain its tourism sector going. Through the FIFA World Cup in 2022, the nation scrambled to open hundreds of lodge rooms, which it now struggles to fill with out comparable mega-events.
With out large-scale occasions, significantly sporting ones, Qatar’s tourism sector tends to shrink. The difficulty is larger when contemplating the nation constructed an additional 10,000 lodge rooms between the beginning of 2022 and now, growing the nation’s provide by a 3rd. Qatar now has simply shy of 40,000 lodge rooms.
Extending Stays within the GCC
The brand new stop-over program additionally comes throughout as a warm-up for the Gulf’s upcoming packages to advertise stays in a number of GCC nations in a single vacation. Qatar Airways, for instance, will facilitate stop-over stays within the nation as vacationers head onward to Dubai.
A unified GCC visa was first talked about in Could 2023 at a convention in Dubai, the place the nations’ ministers shared their hopes to unite the GCC so vacationers would take into account cross-country journey like they do in Europe.
It was then authorized in October final yr. At Arabian Journey Market (ATM) in Dubai, authorities officers stated the “platform” needs to be accomplished earlier than the tip of 2024.
Nations’ tourism orgs are aligning on packages to promote to guests.
At ATM 2024, Abdullah bin Touq Al Marri, Minister for Economic system UAE stated that the visa will embrace “grand packages” a month in size.
“The unified vacationer visa will permit vacationers to go to all six nations,” he stated. By means of the GCC grand excursions we’re aiming to complete, vacationers will spend greater than 30 days within the area.”
One other panelist added that the brand new visa will primarily bump up size of keep within the Gulf. Khalid Jasim Al Midfa, Chairman of Sharjah Commerce and Tourism Improvement Authority stated: “One of many primary goals is to increase the size of keep. In leisure, folks can journey as much as 4 weeks. We would like them to mix their holidays throughout the GCC.”
