By Joseph Varghese/Staff Reporter
Qatar will require around 127,000 hospitality professionals by 2030 to meet the demands from various tourism sectors, a senior official of Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) said yesterday. Currently there are 81 hotels in operation in the country with another 110 under construction.
“At present there are only 20,000 hospitality professionals in Qatar. We have arrived at the figure of around 127,000 by 2030 based on the number of hotels that will be coming up in the next few years as well as the number of products and services that we will be providing in the coming years,” explained Hassan Abdulrahman al-Ibrahim, strategy development director at QTA.
Speaking on the sidelines of a press conference to announce the Qatar International Tourism conference, the official stated that efforts had been underway to meet the rising demands for professionals in the hospitality sector.
“In December last year, we launched a training institute focusing on various sectors including hospitality in co-operation with our partners. It will be operational soon.”
Al-Ibrahim announced that the QTA’s human capital strategy would soon finalise the training and educational opportunities within the sector. “Soon, we will be announcing some of the dates for the launch of these programmes and some of them will start in the next few months. This strategy will decide our roadmap to move forward.”
The QTA official said that details of the expansions in different segments of the hospitality sector would be available in the 2013 annual report of QTA, scheduled to be released soon.
“The annual report will give you an update about the number of upcoming hotels as well as the initiatives in the pipeline. The report also will give the number of visitors to Qatar in 2013 which has seen a significant increase over the last year.”
Prof Robert Coelen, executive dean of Stenden University in Qatar, said the university was prepared to expand its programmes to meet the country’s needs.
“Around 120 students, including 50% Qataris, pass out from the university yearly. At present we have only bachelors programmes and with the permission of the Supreme Education Council we plan to launch a number of post-graduate programmes, including an MBA.”
Qatar would also need to bring from abroad a large number of professionals for the sector, he added.
Doha to host tourism conference
A major international tourism conference is to be hosted in Doha next month under the patronage of HE the Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani by Stenden University Qatar (SUQ) in partnership with the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA). Titled “Tourism in Tomorrow’s World: What the future holds for tourism in the region”, the conference will take place on February 23 and 24 at the Renaissance Doha City Center. The event is in partnership with Al Rayyan Tourism Investment Company (ARTIC), a part of Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani’s Al Faisal Holding Group and
the European Tourism Futures Institute (ETFI).
