Widening of ‘on arrival visa’ system expected to boost Qatar tourism

The recent move to widen the facility for ‘on arrival Qatar visas’ to people from more countries has met with wide acclaim. Experts feel it will prove to be a boon for Qatar’s tourism industry, which the country is keen to promote.

The soon-to-be-implemented online tourist visa application system is part of Qatar’s efforts to develop necessary infrastructure aimed at further driving tourism growth, a senior Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) told Gulf Times.

“Facilitating the visa application process is an important step in the drive to increase the number of visitor arrivals to Qatar,” said chief tourism development officer Hassan Al Ibrahim.

QTA aims to raise inbound spending through the new visa system, expected to come into effect between the first and second quarter of 2017, citing a study it completed in collaboration with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.

Full details of the initiative, including the cost and validity of the tourist visa, will be announced soon.

“We’re working on the process and going through it right now. There’ll be multiple types of visas with different duration,” he said.

Besides souqs, cultural villages, hotels, and state-of-the-art stadiums, Qatar is banking on its Unesco heritage site Al Zubarah and world-class museums (some under construction) to attract more visitors.

Since launching the Qatar’s National Tourism Sector Strategy, the country received more than 7m visitors, and achieved an average annual growth in arrivals of 11.5% between 2010 and 2015.