11 Nov. 2008

In spite of tourism boom in Middle East, especially in Qatar and UAE, nationals and expatriates of these countries have shown great interest to travel outside the country.  Records reveal that the number of tourists and other visitors arriving Europe from the Middle East crossed over 25 million in 2007.

The number of classic and theme hotels in Doha are rising day by day. Though global recession is freezing new property developments, domestic and international investors show little constrains in developing Doha Hotels and Dubai Hotels. Though many new hotel properties were announced for the European market, only a negligible fraction has turned up to proceed with the projects. According to a senior official of Europe's largest luxury hotel chain - Rocco Forte Collection, this rise in number of visitors has placed the Middle East market the second fastest growing destination after Asia. Within the ME region Qatar is the first on the list with over 300% growth in terms of its nationals choosing Europe as the destination. On the whole, Qatar is the third largest outbound market of the region with Saudi Arabia first in the list and followed by the UAE. More details about the demography and touring habits of Qatar Nationals can be found on wikipedia.

France is not just Europe's but world's most visited country and has an enormous property rental and hospitality industry. French tourism industry was supported by visitors from ME following the slow down of tourist inflow from other parts of the world as a result of the economic quakes. But, according to French Government this economic crunch made no relevant impact on the industry and it is immune to this scenario. But however the general feedback from the industry experts is that the visitors did not drop down but were choosy regarding the accommodation and travel options indicating the high level of demand for budget hotels and airlines.