According to Qatar Tourism Authority's (QTA) chief tourism development officer Hassan al-Ibrahim, new plans and measures are being designed to ensure favourable experiences at every touch point of the visitor’s journey to, from and within Qatar.

This will be achieved through:

* Creating tourism experience units in all relevant public and private sector entities – these will be tasked with ensuring that their organisations’ services are streamlined and accessible to tourists.

* Introducing programmes to facilitate interactions and shared experiences between Qatar’s residents and its guests.

* Working with relevant authorities to ensure infrastructure, both physical and digital, is in place to facilitate visitors’ journeys to, from and within Qatar.

* Developing and running training programmes for all employees in tourist-facing jobs.

Five-year targets:

According to QTA, the new tourism strategy aims to attract 5.6mn visitors to Qatar annually by 2023, doubling the number which the country welcomed in 2016. It also aims to achieve a 72% occupancy rate across all hotel establishments, through a combination of increasing demand and diversifying the country’s tourist accommodation offering.

Also by 2023, the strategy aims to have increased tourism’s direct contribution to Qatar’s gross domestic product (GDP) from QR19.8bn in 2016 to QR41.3bn, representing a direct contribution to the GDP of 3.8% (compared to 3.5% in 2016).

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