(MENAFN- Gulf Times) The Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) is planning to open new overseas offices in the United States and Turkey next year to further promote the country's tourism attractions.
Rashed al-Qurese, chief marketing and promotions officer at QTA, on Tuesday said that Qatar Airways' flights to seven destinations within the US makes the latter a primary market for tourism.
"We finished 2013 with two offices and now, we are finishing 2014 with three more offices, so we have a total of five," he said.
QTA currently has overseas offices in the United Kingdom, France, Germany (to cover the Europe market), Saudi Arabia (GCC), and in Singapore (Southeast Asia with focus on Hongkong, Malaysia and Singapore), which opened about two weeks ago.
Al-Qurese was speaking on the sidelines of a three-day "Framework Marketing Summit" which concluded on Tuesday.
QTA is also looking forward to opening an office in Turkey to coincide with the Qatar-Turkey Year of Culture in 2015.
The QTA official stressed that these offices serve as extension to further attract travellers from different parts of the world to visit the country.
"We need to have people on site dealing with these markets, understanding the challenges and delivering our promises," he said, adding that each market is unique in its own way.
Al-Qurese noted that all the five offices have close co-ordination throughout the year, complementing each other to achieve their targets.
He said the UK and France have helped significantly to deliver the numbers "we have committed to the National Tourism Strategy we launched earlier this year."
For the offices which opened only recently, he pointed out results may not be readily available except for public relations coverage and some marketing activities.
The workshop brought together hoteliers, airlines, industry suppliers and tour operator companies in Qatar in addition to senior QTA officials, and representatives of the five overseas offices.
The marketing summit aimed to map out a detailed worldwide tourism promotion programme for 2015 and 2016, according to al-Qurese.
Some of the participants presented their annual reports, plans for the next two years, and a number of specific recommendations to make Qatar an attractive tourism destination.
Reports of established overseas offices such as the UK, France and Germany reflected their "key performance indicator" achievements for 2014.
For newly set up offices which include Saudi and Singapore, their focus was more on strategic marketing plans and targets for the next fiscal year.
Some of the recommendations by the GCC office in Saudi include creating an attractive "GCC weekend offer" for parents, engaging small dinner events and road shows, running campaigns for January and March school breaks, advertising in local newspapers ahead of the travelling season, and running joint promotions with Qatar Airways during major events taking place in Doha.
"As you know, MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing and exhibitions) is not only the role of QTA, we are leading the efforts but it is a sector efforts as well," al-Qurese added.
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