The head of the Qatar Tourism Authority announced, Sunday, that his country expects to receive more than five million visitors in 2023, despite the slowdown in the sector after the FIFA World Cup finals.
Akbar Al-Baker, the Qatar Airways CEO, acknowledged the decline in hotel business after the World Cup ended on December 19 but he stressed that all the countries that earlier hosted the World Cup witnessed a similar situation after the tournament and that the hotels occupancy is still between 65 and 70 percent, reports Al-Jarida daily.
Al-Baker said in a press conference that 1.16 million visitors were registered in the first quarter of 2023, and he told AFP on the sidelines of the conference that he expects at least five million visitors during the year.
In 2019, before the emergence of the “Covid 19” virus, Qatar received about 2.1 million tourists and in comparison, regional rival Dubai welcomed more than 14 million tourists in 2022.
As part of its efforts to reduce dependence on its natural gas wealth, Qatar has spent billions of dollars on tourism infrastructure and hosting major sporting events.
The government has set a target of receiving six million foreign tourists annually by 2030. “I think we will not be very far from that target” in 2023, Al-Baker told AFP, “because of the FIFA World Cup, we have established a lot of infrastructure in the hospitality sector, and of course our task now is to ensure that occupancy rates rise in the coming period,” the Qatari official added.
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