Cruise ship MSC Virtuosa made its fifth call to Doha yesterday as the cruise season intensifies. The ship’s arrival comes days after Mein Schiff 6 made its maiden call in Qatar.
Announcing the arrival of the MSC Virtuosa, Mwani Qatar, in a tweet yesterday, stated: “#DohaPort welcomed MSC Virtuosa on its fifth call with 4,245 passengers and crew onboard. Virtuosa is the newest ship in the MSC fleet. It has a length of 331m, a beam of 52m, and can travel at a maximum speed of 25.5 miles per hour.”
MSC Virtuosa can carry up to 6,334 passengers and 1,704 crew and is set to serve the Arabian Sea until March 2022, MSC cruises disclosed in a statement to launch the ship.
Recently, Mwani Qatar announced that Doha Port was preparing for the upcoming season, which will run until April 26, 2022. This season is expected to host around 76 cruise ships and 86 trips to Doha.
As the tourism and hospitality industry bounces back from the COVID-19 pandemic, Qatar Tourism launched a new international multi-media campaign to drive forward the country’s tourism goals in October. The campaign targets attracting over six million visitors a year by 2030. It features nine unique, engaging key chain characters designed to introduce travellers to Qatar and will roll out across 15 international core markets.
The new advertising campaign reflects Qatar’s commitment to expanding its tourism offerings, in line with Qatar’s National Vision 2030 and the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.
Data from statista.com projects the GDP revenue volume from tourism to rise from QR58.8bn in 2016 to QR200 bn in 2028. The newly-launched initiative aims to raise tourism to 12% of the country’s GDP by 2030.
The cruise tourism sector has achieved continuous and remarkable growth in the years before the pandemic, with collaboration among public and private sector partners. The 2019-20 cruise season witnessed the arrival of 207,000 visitors, while the 2018-19 season achieved growth of 121% in the number of cruises passengers, an increase in the number of cruise ships, with more than 140,000 passengers arriving aboard 44 ships.
