Qatar set to create buzz at Arabian travel show

More than a dozen exhibitors will represent Qatar at this year’s Arabian Travel Market

The Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) will be leading a team of more than a dozen major hospitality and travel exhibitors to represent the country at this year’s Arabian Travel Market (ATM) which takes place from May 4-7 in Dubai, officials said yesterday.

“This is a first for Qatar, the delegation will include officials from the Ministry of Arts, Heritage and Culture as well as the Asian Football 2011 officials.

“This is part of our strategy to promote Qatar both as a cultural and sport destination,” QTA Marketing official Cristina Mules said.

“Whether we’ll be showing a strong presence as part of QTA’s declared strategy of growing the country’s tourism industry by 20% by 2012,” Mules added.

Officials from Aspire and Museum of Islamic Art will also be on-board.

“We expect 10mn foreign travellers passing through Qatar to stay an extra 48 hours in the country beyond the scheduled stopover,” Mules added.

More than 2,200 exhibitors are expected to participate in ATM 2010 with visitor numbers touching at 16,000, officials said.

ATM organisers’ Reed Travel Exhibition group exhibition director Mark Walsh said that Qatar had been a staunch supporter of Arabian Travel Market.

“This year’s Arabian Travel Market is not only giving us the know-how before in helping us all to develop new ways of doing business to capture demanding tourist,” he said.

“Arabian Travel Market is specifically designed to ignite discussion and debate, and create networking opportunities as well as educate. This event has firmly established itself as the Middle East’s leading travel and tourism event’s 16-year history.”

Quoting Euromonitor statistics, officials said that figures showed that last year Qatar’s outgoing tourist expenditure came to $940mn whilst domestic tourism expenditure totalled nearly $900mn.

“Over $510mn came in from incoming tourists and this is projected to rise to over $600mn in the next four years.

All of this doesn’t even touch on what is likely to happen if Qatar wins its bid to host the 2022 World Cup,” Walsh said.

This year’s ATM will also feature a number of new initiatives, including doubling the size of the show’s seminar programme, which will see discussion of such topics as the aviation sector, hotel collection, as well as a new series of marketing seminars.

A “Careers and Travel Agents Day” will be held on May 6, providing career advice for those interested in the service and offering prize give-aways.

“Also new for 2010 will be a competition for delegates those who pre-register for the event using a specific link on the dedicated website arabiantravel-market.com/ Qatar,” ATM marketing manager added.

“Debuting at this year’s ATM will be the staging of four “zones” such as the Culture Zone, the Executive Break Zone, Education Zone and Internet Zone.

QTA chairman said: “Promoting Qatar, as an ideal tourist destination to visitors from around the Middle East is an important aspect of our tourism strategy.”