Skift Take
Qatar is a destination in transition, both with an incredible culture and landscape to experience and the socio-political struggles that come with such development. The clearer the tourism board can be in communicating its realities, the better travelers will be equip to approach the country with an open mind.
Editor’s Note: Skift has started a new series of interviews with CEOs of destination marketing organizations where we discuss the future of their organizations and the evolving strategies for attracting visitors. Read all the interviews as they come out here.
This continues our series of CEO interviews that began with online travel CEOs in Future of Travel Booking (now an e-book), and continued with hotel CEOs in the Future of the Guest Experience series.
Drive around the 51 square miles that make up Doha, Qatar and visitors can see a combination of dazzling architecture and the pure blue gulf.
In the manufactured marketplace Souq Waqif, visitors can meet local Qataris or smoke shisha under a warm sky. And at the man-made island of Pearl-Qatar, they can sip mocha lattes or eat grass-fed hamburgers while shopping any number of brand name stores.
This is the Qatar that the country wants foreigners to learn about. A "world class hub with cultural roots" is how the Chairman of Qatar Tourism Authority H.E. Issa bin Mohammed Al Mohannadi describes it.
There is; however, another, just as real, side to the small Middle Eastern country of just over two million. Steps away from just-built blocks are massive construction sites and piles of uprooted palm trees. These sites are filled less with locals, who only make up a minority of the population, and more with foreign workers dressed in coveralls.
Qatar is in a period of development and it is going through the same steps that many developing countries have gone through before it. Tourism is at the center of its economic growth strategy as the country looks to ease its reliance on natural resources.
The Qatar Tourism Authority published its Qatar National Tourism Sector Strategy 2030 one year ago, which outlines a plan to double the impact of tourism on the GDP to 5.1 percent and to increase visitor arrivals by 11 percent to 7.4 million. The country has already reached some of its benchmarks outlined for 2015 exceeding its goals to welcome 1.7 million visitors and reach $2 billion in tourist spend.
Skift recently sat down with Qatar Tourism Authority Chairman Mr. Al Mohannadi in Doha to talk about the country's strategies for tourism growth, its challenges, and what Mr. Al Mohannadi would say to tourists who have little interest in coming to country based on media reports. An edited version of the interview can be read below:
Skift: Qatar has just recently begun to in
