قطاع الضيافة يشهد نموا بسبب ارتفاع سياحة الأعمالGCC hospitality sector sees strong growth

 

Hotel room revenue of the sector is poised to soar to a record 25bn by 2016, from 17.83bn in 2011, the Centre, known as Markaz, said in a report released recently.

 

Presently, meetings and exhibitions that are being organized have boosted business tourism in the region. “Meetings and exhibitions have emerged as the primary driver for business tourism in countries like the UAE and Qatar,” Markaz said.

 

Although the report doesn”t give details, figures released by Qatar”s tourism promotion agency, Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) suggest 61,406 non-GCC visitors arrived in Qatar in the second quarter (Q2) of this year.

 

According to QTA, more than 60 percent, or 43,000, of these visitors were here for business.

 

Interestingly, the ratio of business visitors in Qatar was higher at an incredible 70 percent in the second quarter of 2012, as some 41,000 of a total of 57,334 visitors were business visitors.

 

If the Markaz report is to be believed, a vast majority of these business visitors might have been delegates invited by the government to attend various meetings and conferences.

 

And most of these conferences and meetings are held in five-star hotels. “This means that the delegates didn”t pay for their stay here. It is rather the Qatari government that paid,” said a critic.

 

QTA figures for the second quarter (April to June, 2013) say the revenue of five-star hotels in the quarter was QR766.59m, up 19.7 percent over the same period of 2012 when the revenue was QR615.77.

 

The revenue of four-star hotels in this period was much less at QR185m, up only 3.2 percent over Q2 of 2012 revenue of QR179.17m. This shows that four-star hotels” income was less because they are not the venues of international conferences and meetings.

 

Critics, therefore, argue that given the situation much of the revenue of the five-star hotels might have come from conferences and meetings and the stay of their foreign delegates.

 

Since these meetings and conferences are mainly organized by the government, this simply means that indirectly the revenues of the five-star hotels came from Qatar itself, argue critics.

 

They further point out that if meetings and conferences are the main driver of the growth in the number of business visitors, proper facilities for such events should at least be made available.

 

“The tariffs of five-star hotels (which are mainly the venues of international meetings and conferences) are very high here, as compared to other GCC states, and there are hardly any proper facilities for extempore translations and video and audio conferencing available,” said a critic.

 

There is only one big hall (Qatar National Convention Centre) for international conferences, and the problem with five-star hotels, aside from high tariffs, is that bookings are not easily available.

 

The hotels are mostly booked for weddings and conferences so there is always a clash over bookings for such events and those for weddings, according to a critic.

 

Meanwhile, the revenue of Dubai hotels and hotels apartments had soared to a record high of 9.8bn dirhams (2.69bn) in the first half of 2012, up an impressive 22 percent over the same period of 2011, according to Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).