Convening large-scale events in Qatar cannot be done without the cooperation of the hospitality sector.
However, the hotels need assistance off the government to attract tourists to the country, whether they come here for leisure or business. As evidenced below, both groups are pragmatically working together to try to sell the country, and the products and services it offers, to a global standard.
Recent figures from the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) revealed that eight new hotels opened up in Qatar in 2011, bringing the total number to 74; this increases the total number of rooms to 11,341 - a figure which is still miniscule compared to the country's ultimate aspirations. Despite the increase in hotel room inventory, occupancy rates in hotels remained at 59% for the year, with January and February recording the highest rates because of the Asian Cup.
The ultimate commitment is for the FIFA World Cup in 2022 of course, where up to 90,000 hotel rooms are required. However, regardless of whether the country won the rights to stage this event, Qatar's strategy was to promote business tourism anyway, and boosting the number of hotel rooms in the country was always a medium-term goal.
QTA Chairman, Ahmed Al-Nuaimi recently explained that there are plans to reach 30,000 hotel rooms by 2013, with 5,000 new rooms coming online each year through to 2022.
Speed of Development
Al-Nuaimi agreed that over-supply was a key concern for everybody, but he was confident that any extra hotel capacity post-2022 could be absorbed with an airport that could process 50 million people per year as well as Doha Port being a hub for the cruise business.
In fact, his biggest worry is the speed of the development of the hotels and infrastructure. Although the QTA are working diligently with investors and developers, and there is over a decade until the World Cup, the primary lesson they learned from the 2006 Asian Games was to promote a culture of preparedness in relation to staging large-scale events.
Al-Nuaimi confirmed last year that their strategy was as a business tourism destination as opposed to concentrating on the tourists who were in pursuit of a lazy vacation. The QTA figure the highend market will always flourish. Whilst private hotels can follow their own policies, the QTA will be primarily available to assist with attracting business tourists to their facilities.
"We don't want people to come for a $50 room to lie on the beach all day and walk around with a backpack and shorts," he said. "These are not the type of people we're targeting. For the last five or six years we've invested in high-end hotels and facilities, high-end convention centres and museums. But we're not looking for it to be a revenue-generating industry. We are different from the neighbouring countries. They focus on tourism as a source of income. If (the tourism market) crashes, it makes no difference to us."
Qatar Today spoke to a couple of hotel groups in Doha to investigate what they were doing to promote themselves in the GCC region and globally, as well as their relationship with the Qatari Government.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company
"We are working very hard with the Qatar Tourism Authority," said Herve Humler, President and Chief Operating Officer of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co LLC. "The Ministry is working diligently with the hotels and you do not find this everywhere you go. It's a very exciting relationship; they are going to create an organisation where they are going to gather all the feedback off the hoteliers in the country.
In fact, they have a significant budget to advertise Qatar to the world, and this is something, as a company, we cannot do. So it is great to have them on our side like this.
"We learned from the Ministry today that Qatar has 17,000 hotel rooms but the event organisers for the Conference on Climatic Change have requested 27,000 hotel rooms, so there is huge room for growth. They do not want to slow down - they want to push ahead because they know the day you become stagnant will be detrimental.
"The new airport is amazing. It is extremely well positioned to compete with any airport out there and will certainly provide extra distribution for Qatar. I am glad a second convention centre is being constructed, because you will be able to accommodate a second city-wide event that wants to come to the city at the same time."
Cluster General Manager for Ritz-Carlton Doha, Hoss Vetry oversees operations at the Ritz-Carlton and the Sharq Village and Spa Hotel on the Corniche, which he explained are two totally conflicting products and don't in any way compete with each other.
"Doha is very much a business oriented city, mainly driven by the government sector. 90% is very much business, 10% leisure, but it's changing. The leisure segment has certainly improved to a degree. There are more entertainment facilities, water-park, Souk Waqif, the museums. I think the country will evolve into a leisure tourism destination eventually.
"The Ritz-Carlton is the number one government hotel. Any government events take place there, simply because of the way the hotel is laid out. The banquet facilities have a friendly feel and the hotel is also very easy to secure. So that hotel is mainly government driven. We do have regional MICE groups coming too; we promote groups, city-wide events, and corporate programmes.
"Sharq Village and Spa Hotel does both surprisingly - business and leisure. It has a relaxed feel. How great is it that you can have an important business meeting in a resort setting. You can leave the meeting and warm up for a period of relaxation straight away."
The facilities are definitely in place and the staff are well trained to stage an event, so what is The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company doing to promote a) Qatar as a tourist destination and b) the Ritz-Carlton Hotel itself.
"We look for every opportunity out there. Our sales group is very active. Most of our visits are to our clients to say 'hello', to see if they need anything. Perhaps they might book something in our hotel at a later date; we have to have a continuous presence in the market. I am going to Turkey this week and last week I was in Saudi Arabia, the week before I was in Kuwait. In two weeks I'm going to Germany. My Director of Sales and Marketing is in Kuwait today, so you can see the effort we are putting in.
"The QTA are preparing for a marketing blitz on seven regional cities in April. They really are doing a great job; they are very active, promoting the hotels and working with Qatar Airways. Together we have recently gone to Berlin, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Barcelona, Cannes, Frankfurt, Singapore and the UK to present the country. Actually ever since the winning 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, we just promote the hotels because people know the country now. I personally admire the Chairman [Ahmed Al Nuaimi]; he's a very smart businessman, he has a great relationship with the hotels."
Is there a chance that Qatar won't be able to attract the tourists and the events which it is aspires to? It's all very well to have a halfdozen large events each year which flood the hotel industry, but what about the rest of the year. How do the hotels cope with the idle hours?
"As a hotel operator I will always say I am worried about oversupply, but I can also look at it in a positive way: the more competition, the higher the standard, the better the overall product. We always want competition because every hotel chain that comes to Qatar brings their own customers, their own brand followers. If we maintain our standards, then we'll always have these customers.
"With the convention facilities which are being developed and the airport is going to bring huge capacity. If we could get six or seven events like the WPC last December every year, it would really help the hotel industry financially. As a result of QNCC and the other dedicated convention facilities, we are doing more weddings as compensation. We average at about three a week in both The Ritz- Carlton Hotel, Doha and Sharq Village and Spa Hotel, with maybe 600-700 guests at each one. It's a different way of doing business."
Marriott International
Alex Kyriakidis, President and Managing Director of Marriott Middle East and Africa, echoed Humler's sentiment about the relationship the Qatari government has with the hotels.
"The degree of interest from the Qatari Government in the hotel industry is overwhelming. I've worked in the hotel industry all over the world, and with many different governments and this is one of the few that takes a very close interest in the hospitality industry and wants to be a partner in it. Qatar cannot grow unless it can host visitors and to do this you need hotel rooms, so the partnership is crucial and that's why we visited them - to help deliver the growth that Qatar is looking for.
"Qatar is seeking to position itself as the meeting and conference hub of the Gulf. So what will drive this? If you look at the big industrial drivers of the economy here - the hydrocarbons, etc - you can easily see there's outstanding business demand here. Then you have cultural tourism and the improved infrastructure. So on the back of these, the related industry exhibitions and conferences are being pulled into Qatar. So we think that the continued investments in infrastructure, coming alongside the major sporting events in the future, and the recent development of the conference and exhibition space will work synergistically to ramp up the conferences and exhibition space in Qatar even more. This will therefore raise the demand for hotels."
Marriott International has 38 hotels - under different brand names - in the Middle East and they are hoping to bring this figure to 90 by 2015, an annual growth rate of 25%. These 38 hotels employ 12,000 people, so they predict that if their growth continues as hoped, they should be employing 30,000 people in the region in three years.
St. Regis Doha
General Manager at the recently opened St Regis Doha, Tareq Derbas says his hotel is being built to cater for all sectors, but mainly corporate business and corporate groups. The hotel features 336 rooms including 70 suites, 10 restaurants and bars, 4,000 squaremetres of meeting space (which can also host bespoke weddings or other social events) and extensive recreational facilities including Remede Spa, an Olympic sized swimming pool and beachfront cabanas with private Jacuzzis.
"It also offers a 1,800 square metre boardroom, business centre and conference rooms, so conferences and business meetings are going to be the backbone of our business in this regard," said Derbas. "We started promoting it six months ago going to the major global trade shows. It's important to meet potential business and corporate clientele - they know we have the facility and we can cater for their needs. I went myself to the luxury travel market in China; our sales and marketing team came back from Cannes recently where they attended the International Travel Market. We got great leads and met a lot of business potentials. A lot of the time you get a facility with 150 or 200 rooms but they haven't got the state of the art banquet and conference facilities like we do and rooms to back it up. We are also in every MICE publication worldwide."
"We also have a very good programme within Starwood's Preferred Planner, which is an incentive plan for people who do business with them, so this helps us get the benefits of their booking channels worldwide. "Every brand creates its own market. We have 22 people in our sales team and they attract new business; they need to be creative to bring business from outside the city. There needs to be a public trust in the brand. There's this perception that there are too many hotels - 'you need to secure business, how are you going to do this?'
- I'm not worried at all, we have a great product. If you come up with a brand which will add value to the market, if you come up with a service which people will value, you will definitively get your fair market share. The demand for luxury is becoming more apparent as the clientele is becoming more sophisticated.
"The QTA's support has also been great. They recently saw our facility and they were very impressed. It takes two to tango. We need their support, but they also need us to do our part, like providing rooms and a quality service. Neither of us can do much on our own, we have to work together."
© Qatar Today 2012
