Rashed al-Qurese presents yesterday QTA’s achievements for the first three quarters of 2015. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil

By Joey Aguilar/Staff Reporter


Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) is expecting more Germans to visit the country in the coming years, a senior official said yesterday.
“Germans are good spenders and they travel a lot to other parts of the world,” QTA’s chief marketing and promotions officer Rashed al-Qurese stated.
Speaking on the sidelines of QTA’s marketing quarterly meeting yesterday the official said Germany is an important market for QTA because it is one of the top source markets in the world.
Air accessibility and the presence of a QTA overseas office in Germany makes Qatar one of the best destinations for Germans who travel frequently like other Europeans.
Qatar Airways flies frequently to German cities, as well as Lufthansa. “All the ingredients are there for the German market and I would like to push for it in the future,” al-Qurese said.
QTA had seen an increasing number of visitors across all markets including those outside the GCC.
“Yes we have witnessed an increase but it varies, some got 1%, some we’ve got 11%, some more than that, but overall it is increasing across all markets,” the official observed.
QTA has overseas offices in the UK (which targets visitors from London and Scotland), France, Germany (covers Austria and Switzerland since many are German speaking), Singapore (also covers Malaysia and Hongkong); and Saudi Arabia (covers the whole GCC).
“Sometimes it is also important to maintain the increase in tourist numbers,” al-Qurese said.
Compared with the other markets in the world, he pointed out, Qatar recorded a huge increase in the number of visitors from the GCC particularly in Saudi Arabia due to many reasons.
“We got tremendous result from the GCC office so far obviously for a lot of reasons. Proximity, accessibility, language, and all of that is good,” he added.
But for the European market, he noted that Qatar still enjoys about 130,000 visitors from the UK who travel to the country for pleasure, business and other reasons. QTA hopes to cross the “140,000 threshold” from the previous year.