Fourth Qatar Summer Festival starts officially

The fourth Qatar Summer Festival (QSF), the longest and biggest yet, officially started yesterday and expects a wide range of tourists from around the world, besides the local and regional visitors, despite the blockade imposed by the neighbouring countries.

The festival expects to attract more visitors from Kuwait during the Eid holidays and from beyond the region, after the peak summer season, according to Mashal Shahbik, Director of Festivals and Tourism Events at Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA).

Organized by the QTA and held under the theme ‘Colour Your Summer’, the nationwide festival offers a shopping and hotel promotions, live entertainment activities at malls as well as the Summer Entertainment City at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre (DECC) until September 5.

“Our strategy is not only to focus on the regional countries, we are looking at visitors from different countries. We aim at diversifying Qatar Visitor’s source markets through special travel offers. Have been Qatar Airways flying to different destinations we are expecting different people come visit Qatar not only during the summer but also until Eid Al Adha,” said Shahbik speaking on the sidelines of a media tour of the Summer Entertainment City.

“We have witnessed an increase on visitors from Kuwait from the beginning of this year, and we are hoping it will continue. They have created a hashtag on social media in Kuwait encouraging people to come and spend Eid in Qatar. We are hoping to welcome them warmly, by giving multiple offers to meet their expectations,” she added.

The shopping promotions of the festival started yesterday and the other activities will begin on June 26, Sunday. Shoppers can enjoy up to 50 percent discount at retail outlets in Al Khor Mall, Doha Festival City, The Mall, Gulf Mall, mall of Qatar, Lagoona Mall and at the Landmark Mall.

The Summer Entertainment City at the DECC and will open for visitors on Sunday. It is delivered by local events management company, QSports and has a lot to offer for people of all ages starting form toddlers to adults. The City has been designed with the concept of making visitors be more active.

It features 87 games and will stage more than 30 shows and performances. Activities will be open daily from 2pm to 11pm, and an entry ticket will cost QR15. Individual games are priced between QR 5 and QR 75.  Its outstanding features include the world’s largest inflatable obstacle. The 5km inflatable obstacle can accommodate 300 people at once, according to Adil Ahmed, Founder of Qsports.

The Summer Entertainment City also has the biggest ever trampling park and around 100 children and adults can play on it at a time. It also has timba cars, Bricklyn Lego, skill games, virtual reality and arcade games, a paintball shooting range and live entertainment shows. It will also have food court and pop-up shows.  The Summer Entertainment City will also host the fourth international mindsports championships bringing together 1,500 mindsports enthusiasts from over 40 countries. The competition will be held between August 19 and August 27.