(MENAFN- The Peninsula) By Sachin Kumar | The Peninsula
Doha: Over 1.8 million people visited Qatar last year, driven by strong inflow of travellers from countries in Asia and Europe. Of the total visitors, 41 percent were from ‘other Asia' region while 29 percent of the visitors were from Europe in 2018, according to the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics data.
From the figures, 753,161 visitors were from countries in 'other Asia region while 528,333 visitors came from Europe.
A little over 200,000 visitors came from GCC countries, taking the share of visitors of these countries to 11 percent in total visitors inflow during 2018. The visitors from Americas accounted for nine percent of the total visitor arrivals as 161,162 visitors from Americas travelled to Qatar last year.
Share of visitors from ‘other Arab countries' to Qatar was seven percent while the share of visitors from ‘other African countries' was three percent in 2018.
Visitor arrivals measure non-residents travelling to Qatar on a short-term basis for all purposes. It includes arrivals at borders under 15 different visit visa classes, including all business and leisure visa types while excluding work visas.
According to the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics, a visitor is a traveller taking a trip to a main destination outside his usual environment, for less than a year, for any main purpose (business, leisure or other personal purpose) other than to be employed by a resident entity in the country or place visited. A visitor is classified as a tourist, if his trip includes an overnight stay.
The increase in number of tourists in the country reflects the proactive steps taken by the authorities to boost tourism. Qatar has identified tourism as one of five priority sectors for achieving economic diversification in Qatar and several steps were taken to increase tourist inflow in the country.
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