Qatar's Tourism Development: Planning, Impact, and Sustainability

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of tourism development in Qatar, examining various aspects of the industry. Task 1 discusses the benefits stakeholders derive from tourism development planning, focusing on economic growth and employment opportunities, and also explores the advantages and disadvantages of public/private sector partnerships, using examples such as the 'World Tourism Day' and the '2019 World Athletics Championships.' Task 2 delves into the features of tourism development planning at different levels (international, national, regional, and sub-regional) and evaluates interactive planning systems, such as boosterism and market-led approaches. The report also assesses methods for measuring tourist impact, including survey questionnaires, observations, and economic models like the Cambridge Economic Impact Model and the STEAM model. Finally, the report identifies factors hindering sustainable tourism development in Qatar, highlighting the importance of balancing economic growth with environmental and socio-cultural considerations.

Travel and Tourism
Management
Unit 7
Sustainable Tourism
Development
Contents
Task 1 ....................................................................................................................................................3

Task 2.................................................................................................................................................5
Task 3.............................................................................................................................................7
3.2 Factors that may prevent/hinder sustainable tourism development with reference to Qatar..11
3.3 Different stages in planning for sustainability with reference Qatar.........................................12
Task 4 ..............................................................................................................................13
Task 5 ....................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES.................................................................................................16
REFERENCES.................................................................................................16

Task 1
1.1 Discuss how stakeholders can benefit from planning of tourism developments with reference to
Qatar.
Tourism:
Tourism is when you people visit a specific place in order to visit, and experience new places and
cultures. In economic terms, tourism is the business that focuses on attracting the tourists from
different place to come and visit in the host country as it increases income of the company. (Burns
and Novelli, 2007). Tourism is a major income for countries, as a lot of people visit; they’ll usually
spend money on hotels, tickets to visit specific museums or places, souvenirs and many more.
Tourism in Qatar
As in any other countries, Qatar also highly benefits from tourists. Qatar has drove tourists due to its
beautiful beaches, museums and many more attractive and beautiful places for people to visit.
According to the UN World Tourism Organization, tourism accounts for 10% of total GDP and 1 in 11
jobs worldwide. (http://www.visitqatar.qa) Global visitor arrivals totalled 1.13 billion in 2014 and
will reach 1.8 billion by 2030 (http://www.visitqatar.qa)
Stakeholders involved in tourism development:
Stakeholders are that are related to the tourism industry and have a way to contribute to the
tourism industry. There are three types of stakeholders and these are; national government, local
destination and finally the tourism sector operating in the destination.
National government:
At national level, the regulatory authority of tourism is DOT. It is the government organisation that
regulates the tourism sector at national level and frames the policies at with aspect for the whole
nation. (Cooper and Hall, 2008)
Local destination:
These stakeholders are the ones that involve organisation that work and regulate at a local level. So
the organisation include Local Government Units, these are the members of civil society which
represent the nongovernmental organisations.
Tourism sector operating in the destination:
This is the final group of stakeholders that is classified under the tourism section. This group involves
the private businesses that provide accommodation, transportation and other services to the
tourists. (Evans, Campbell and Stonehouse, 2003)
Benefits of stakeholders from planning of tourism development:
Stakeholders get a variety of benefits from planning of tourism development. For example, one of
the benefits is the economic benefit. As mentioned before Qatar’s tourism account for 10% of the
total GPD, therefore the economic growth of the country is quite dependant on tourism. There are
also a lot of employment opportunities that are provided by either private or local tourism sectors.

1.2 Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of public/private sector tourism planning partnerships
drawing examples Qatar.
Public/private partnership is when the government and local tourism organisations partnership in
order to achieve a common goal. So Qatar will help both of the sectors in order to have the sectors
work well together as well as having a well-mannered working environment. An example of a
partnership would be when they organised ‘World Tourism Day’ in Qatar. Of course with the
public/private partnership, there are advantages and disadvantages.
An advantage would be the better infrastructure solutions, what this means is that when two sectors
join together, their abilities and skills in organising and much more increases massively. This
furthermore displays another advantage which is the time to produce a project, which will of course
be lower. This is again because of the combined skills and efforts put in by both sectors. Another
huge advantage will of course be the quality of the projects. Because two different sectors are
working together and are combining their knowledge and skills, the project will be of a much higher
quality. An example of how these advantages can benefit Qatar will be the upcoming ‘2019 World
Athletics Championships’. Having two sectors partnership can increase the quality of production and
tourism comfort as well as travel as there are more people that are working on it with a very wide
set of skills.
There aren’t many huge disadvantages to public/private partnerships, the biggest disadvantage will
bet the cost of bidding. This is because of the difficulty to decide the cost of bidding. There is also
the problem with having less numbers of private participants. If there is large expertise from the
private side, government bears the losses as the private participant have the power to decide on the
cost of the project. (Miller and Twining-Ward, 2005)
Task 2
2.1 Analyse features of tourism development planning at different levels with reference to the
Qatar.
Nature of tourism planning in Qatar:
Qatar’ tourism accounts of 10% GDP, therefore there are a lot of jobs that are open in Qatar that
relate to tourism. Tourism planning refers to either doing a big event in Qatar, therefore there is a
lot of work to do to appeal to tourists that come to Qatar for that specific event. Tourism planning
also refers to providing a hotel, transport, tickets to visit Qatar’s attractions and many more that
they have to deal with.
There are different tourism planning that stand at different levels.
The first level that I will discuss is ‘International level’, this is when the tourism business involves
tourists from outside the country. Having very good tourism planning on an international business, is
very efficient as it increases the reputation of tourism therefore it will attract more people. This will
of course benefit Qatar as there will be more tourists visiting. This will further make organisations
want to organise events in Qatar which attracts even more tourists. Planning at international level
mainly focuses on improving the transport facilities as well as investing into the multi-country
marketing strategies. (Page, 2009)

The second level will be the ‘National level’, this level refers to business from the national or
domestic tourists. What this simply means is when people that live in Qatar visit Qatar, which makes
them national tourists. Some may require a hotel to stay at as well as transport while visiting a
different parts of Qatar.
The third level would be ‘Regional level’, this is when the tourism involves a specific region of the
country. This will mainly focus on increasing attraction in order for the region to be visited by people.
The regional level planning will focus on building more hotels for people to accommodate in and
transport.
The fourth and final level is the ‘Sub-regional level’, this is where policies and strategies are formed
when they are needed. So it mainly focuses on improving and maintaining the conditions of
attractions, transport facilities, accommodation methods and more.
2.2 Evaluate the significance of interactive planning systems and processes in tourism development
with reference to Qatar.
I will discuss the different approaches that are used to attain objectives in tourism development.
These are all used at different occasions when it comes to planning. For example Qatar will use a
different type of approach when it comes to international tourism and national tourism.
Boosterism:
This is the part of tourism development where they focus on increasing the economic development
of the country by using tourism. This type of approach overlooks sustainable practices. The practices
have been practiced when the politicians think that only economic growth is necessary for
development. (Richards and Hall, 2000)
Conventional:
This type of approach is highly reactive as it’s used when there are any required improvements
Interactive:
This approach is a collaborative one, so it involves the help of local authorities in order to make
better decisions when making a plan for improvement in tourism decisions.
Integrated planning:
This approach has a continuous planning process that keeps improving and modifying according to
the changes. This approach is highly effective when it comes to dynamic challenges.
Supply-led:
It is the approach that deals with improving only that attraction that is found to be interested by the
people or tourists. (Seyfi, 2016)
Market-led: This final approachis used to develop and improve tourism. This highly focuses on
improving tourist attractions and coming up with various marketing strategies to attract tourists.
2.3 Evaluate different methods available to measure tourist impact with reference to Qatar.

In travel and tourism sector, it is important for company to understand about the impact of
tourist on the destinations. With the assistance of this, they can easily improve their experience
towards the particular destination. For effectively measure the tourist impact, organization use
various methods which help them in measuring the impact of tourist in Qatar are as follows:
Survey questionnaires: This method is play a vital role in measuring the tourist impact on the
particular destination. Under this, organisation develop various questions towards the places where
tourist are go to visit. With the assistance of this, organization of Qatar can easily evaluate the
effectiveness as well as importance of specified place. Mainly the questionnaire is based on the
tourist demand, opinion and preferences towards the place in order to understand their actual
needs and impact as well.
Observations: It is one of the important method which used by organization with the aim of
measuring the impact of tourist on destination. With the use of this method, business organization
can easily understand about the customers taste and preferences and also includes innovation for
making destination more attractive. Along with this, it also help in evaluating the expenditure of
travel that used by tourist at the time of travelling such as transportation, accommodation, food and
many more.
Report published by tourism authorities: This method is also play an important role in
measuring the tourist impact on the destination. In this tourism authorities publish the report which
is related with the overall development of tourist destination. In a year, number of people comes for
the purpose of travelling. With the assistance of this organization can easily measured the impact of
tourist on tourism.
Feedback from other stakeholders: It is also an effective method in which company take
feedback from stakeholder like government tourist and many more towards the destination places.
With the assistance of this, organization can easily evaluate what changes are required to be taken
place.
All these are consider as an effective ways which help in measuring as well as evaluating the
impact of tourist on particular destination. In this context, it is important for travel agency to
develop as questionnaire methods as it help in understanding the tourist views and opinion towards
the tourist destination.
Cambridge Economic Impact Model:
This focuses on measuring the value of tourism in the local economies. This model follows two
stages, the first stage would calculate the volume and value of tourists staying in a specific area. The
second stage will be examining the impact of tourists spending on local economy. So Qatar can use
this method to find out what type of attractions and what hotels mostly attract to the average
tourist. Therefore they will know to have similar hotels constructed as well as marketing attractions
that most tourists would be interested in.
STEAM model:
This model looks over visitors during the day as well as how many tourists are staying in
accommodation facilities. There are four different inputs that the model extracts data from:

The information of how many facilities are occupied by tourists monthly
Bed stock for each of the accommodation facilities
Attractions attendance monthly
And the last input would be tourist information centre visitors monthly
These can be used by Qatar in order to find out what tourists are mostly interested in when they
visit Qatar.
Task 3

3.2 Factors that may prevent/hinder sustainable tourism development with
reference to Qatar
Sustainable tourism development play vital role in making destination more attractive which
help in inviting large number of tourist over there. Mainly, it includes environmental, economic,
socio culture and many more that help in development of tourism in order to attain long term
sustainability. In this context there are some factors that may hinder and prevent sustainable
tourism development are as follows:
Government policies: In Qatar, number of people are comes from different countries for
travelling purpose in which they see change in the government regulation which can hinder the
sustainable tourism development. The main reason behind this is that they fail in understanding the
changes in government policies of Qatar.
Expectation of markets and clients: Taste and preferences of tourist is totally different form
each other like some people wants to visit cultural destination and some likes to visit natural places.
Thus, it is important for travel and tourism company to understand needs and wants of tourist in
order to provide them services accordingly. This will directly contribute in increasing the number of
tourist in Qatar. It help in improving the sustainable tourism development in an appropriate manner.
Lack of knowledge about Qatar sustainability: This factor can hinder the sustainable
tourism development because lack of knowledge in people towards the Qatar and its development.

It negatively impact on the social development of tourism. On the other side, if people arr well
educated and have knowledge about the Qatar then they focus on the development of particular
destination which foster the sustainable tourism development.
3.3 Different stages in planning for sustainability with reference Qatar
Planning is important for every business organization to improve performance level. As per
current scenario, it is significant for sustainability that may aid in enhancing the profitability level of
travel company. Along with this, it is also help in inviting large number of tourist towards the
destination and company services as well. In this context there are some stages that includes in
planning process of sustainability are as follows:
Legal requirement: It is one of the important stage in which travel company is responsible
for follow all the legal requirement that set by Qatar government. Thus, it is important for company
to implement all the legal formalities which may help in reducing the chances of arising any kind of
issues in planing activities of sustainability.
Financial targets: Under this second stages, company set appropriate financial target that is
required for making plan for trip. In context of Qatar, it is become more popular tourism destination
wherein number of visitors are comes for visit purpose. In this travel agency needs to arrange and
organise adequate fund which help in managing entire activities of trip in an appropriate manner.
For this travel organization set a budget which includes all the expensed that consist in planing
activities.
Operational requirement: In this stage, travel agency is responsible for operating as well as
evaluate entire business function in order to attain customers attention towards its services. Apart
from this, operational requirements is also help in making an appropriate planning about providing
customers services, enough fund location and functions as well. This will directly contribute in
capturing large number of traveller attentions.
Stakeholders expectation: Under this stage of planning towards the sustainable tourism
development as it focus on expectation of stakeholder that required for development. In this, travel
agency is responsible for effectively manage as well as understand stakeholder demand and
requirements by communicating with them. With the help of this, Qatar government can easily fulfil
tourist demand by interacting as well as understanding their demand.
Review and evaluation method: It is last and foremost stage in which organization evaluate
as well as review all the activities that used to make effective tourism plan. With the help of this,
company easily attain higher growth and development that contribute in enhancing the number of
tourist at particular destination.
Task 4
4.1 Evaluate methods of resolving a conflict of interests to ensure the future wellbeing of a
developing tourism destination such as Qatar
Conflict of interests can happen when two parties are engaged in the same project however they
have different ideas for the project therefore it can lead to a conflict between them. Another reason

that a conflict may start may be because of the high amount of stakeholders. The conflicts need to
stop in order to successfully get on with planning. Below I will talk about the few common conflicts
as well as methods to fix them.
Tension between planners: If a plan has been already made and there are more than one planner
that don’t agree to a plan. They have to work together and work around their differences in order to
make a plant that will satisfy all planners. There may be different views of community and
government. So, it becomes the reason of conflict between the planners. (Cooper and Hall, 2008)
Tour operators
Multiple tour operators may have collaborations with the same hotels in order to provide services to
their tourists. There may be a conflict between the tour operators as well as the hotel as they
provide for more than one company which is too much because of the limited rooms. The tour
operators should most probably collaborate with more than one hotel as this is a common conflict
starter.
Social
There are a lot of conflicts on the subject of social impacts that happen between parties. Having such
conflicts may decrease the social aspect of the place which would repel the tourist from visiting
Qatar. The way to solve this conflict is by avoiding making such conflicts public and maybe even
avoids the subject of social impact if it’s going to have a negative impact.
Cultural
The cultural image of the country also suffers due to existence of conflicts. (Miller and Twining-
Ward, 2005), to avoid this the conflicts should be kept private
4.2 Analyse the implications of balancing supply and demand with reference to Qatar.
Tourism is one fastest growing industry. It's a service industry which means it mainly depend upon
human resources at regional, national and international level and from many different service
sectors such as accommodation, travel agencies etc. Tourism industry undergoes constantly
fluctuation in terms of products.
For a sustainable tourism there should be balance between demand and supply of tourism. In
context to Qatar, its tourism sector is growing rapidly fast because of supply of travel agencies are
fruitful in compare to other industry. One of the main factor for growth in tourism is they have
sound infrastructure as it growing by three times fast. The main reason behind this is that the
customers are getting attracted towards Qatar and it impact the country's economy in terms of
increase in revenue. Apart from this their government is playing a vital role in their growth because
of its stability and always concern about the customers needs and wants which affect the economy
and growth of a country. Qatar's government is inviting the investors from all over the world to
invest in tourism and attracting the targeting customers. For more expansion Qatar tourism sector is
working with authorities to implement favourable laws and policies which increase the country's