Hotel guests from GCC states Qatar 2022, by hotel class

In 2022, the number of Gulf guests that booked into five-star hotels in Qatar was about 313.5 thousand. The class of hotels is categorized by stars; based on this, a hotel with five stars is categorized as a luxury hotel.

MENA tourism trends

In 2018, the United Nations World Tourism Organization stated that tourism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region almost exceeded six percent of the total worldwide tourist arrivals. Moreover, the MENA’s total value of tourism in 2018 was 73 billion U.S dollars. The most popular online travel company among MENA region tourists in 2018 was booking.com. Tourism in the MENA region ranges from business, leisure, health, and wellness, to religious, cultural, and shopping tourism. Morocco was the leading country in wellness tourism in 2015 with about 2.5 million visitors. The MENA economies are highly dependent on the income from the tourism industry as they have also begun to diversify their oil-based economies with a focus on tourism. The number of tourism arrivals in the MENA region in 2018 exceeded 60 million, of which 15.8 million were received in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the whole MENA region and the world suffered severe losses in the tourism industry.

Qatar tourism trends

In 2011, tourism arrivals in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were expected to surpass 64.3 million tourists by 2020. Tourism had a contribution of 61.4 billion Qatari riyals to the country’s gross domestic product in 2018. Most tourists visiting Qatar spend nights in five-star luxury hotels. The average daily rate of hotels in the Doha center in Qatar was about 79 U.S. dollars during 2020. Doha is the capital and the city with the highest population in Qatar. It has many touristic attractions including the famous Souq Waqif or Waqif market which is an old walkway enclosed by restored buildings that highlight the country’s heritage. The highest number of tourists who visited Qatar in the first quarter of 2019 came from Europe.