Tourism stakeholders, QTA overseas office officials and guests attended the Marketing quarterly meeting Wednesday. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil

By Joey Aguilar/Staff Reporter

Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) will open its overseas office in the US either in December or early next year, its chief marketing and promotions officer Rashed al-Qurese told reporters.
He said they consider the US as a very important market, citing the increasing number of Qatar Airways (QA) flights to its key cities.
“With these expansions and recent announcement of QA about all the new routes to the US, it is becoming imperative for us and we support that with a lot of tourism messages,” al-Qurese noted.
He was speaking on the sidelines of their Marketing quarterly meeting at the W Doha Hotel and Residences, attended by tourism stakeholders in Qatar, representatives from various companies involved in tourism, and officials at QTA overseas offices.
The move is part of QTA’s strategy to further promote Qatar’s tourism attractions (and as a luxury destination) in various part of the world.
“We are working on it we need to find the right partners and we are going for an outsource model. We will only go for the semi-outsource in three years time and we will have someone from QTA there,” al-Qurese said.
“We are looking for the right partners to make sure that they represent Qatar and work closely with us,” he added. “We are looking into the US, it might be December, January or February because there are contracts negotiations.”
QTA will also open its Turkey office this year to coincide with the 2015 Qatar-Turkey Year of Culture.
Al-Qurese said their budget is ready for another satellite office in Europe which will serve as an extension to entice more tourists outside the GCC.
The QTA officials also announced that they will be opening the new Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre (DECC) in November this year.
According to al-Qurese, the state-of-the-art QTA headquarters will have more meeting rooms and halls to host various events, exhibitions and shows.
“Previously we had Qatar National Convention Centre and the Doha Exhibition Centre. The DECC is located at the heart of the business district of Qatar (West Bay),” he said.
QTA has appointed ELAN Qatar and Fira Barcelona to manage and operate the DECC, considered as a Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events (MICE) facility.
Constructed by Qatari Diar on an area that spans more than 90,000 square metres, the facility incorporates five vast, pillar-free halls. Each can accommodate approximately 3,500 delegates.
“We are coming up with innovative exhibition ideas and our Exhibitions Department headed by its director Hamad al-Abdan is working on some incentive schemes into bringing exhibitions,” the QTA official added.
Part of QTA’s strategy is to increase the number of visitors by 20% to Qatar as a MICE destination in the next five years.