Planning for a Qatar Without Oil: Tourism and Economic Diversification, a Battle of Perceptions

Qatar's long-term strategy is to plan for when the country will not be dependent upon oil and gas reserves. The strategy focuses on export diversification through development of service industries, including finance, knowledge-based sectors and tourism. This is a sensible option given the availability of capital and paucity of non-energy resources. To date the success in attracting tourists has been limited. The country faces challenges with its economic diversification strategy through tourism, including the task of creating a strong destination image and assuring personal safety, civil liberty and political stability in a region not noted for these characteristics. It also needs to offer a product sensitive to the religious and cultural traditions of the host population whilst appealing to international tourists. This paper looks at diversification as a development strategy, the rationale for Qatar's diversification strategy, the risk perceptions and appeal of Qatar as a destination and empirically tests whether Qatar fits into a typology of evoked, inert or inept sets of destinations. The results show strong support for the link between export diversification and economic growth but while seen as a safe destination, Qatar lacks appeal and does not fall into the evoked set of destinations for UK visitors.