Hassan Al Ibrahim, QTA’s Chief Tourism Development Officer (right); Abdulaziz bin Nasser Al-Khalifa, CEO of Qatar Development Bank (second right), and Mashal Shahbik, QTA's Festivals and Tourism Events Director, during a tour of the pop-up shops at Mall o
Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) aims at providing platform to 60 Qatari entrepreneurs and startups to promote their products at the ongoing Shop Qatar Festival, a QTA official has said.
“The main focus of Shop Qatar besides further enhancing the shopping offering in the country is to support the Qatari entrepreneurs. Our target is to reach out to 60 entrepreneurs and startups throughout Shop Qatar festival,” Hassan Al Ibrahim, Chief Tourism Development Officer at QTA told the media during a tour of the pop-up shops at Mall of Qatar yesterday.
The festival, which runs until February 7, features 30 temporary pop-up shops spread across participating malls. Ten of them are set up at the newly-opened Mall of Qatar while several others are in Ezdan Mall, Landmark Mall, The Gate Mall and Lagoona Mall.
While the majority of the pop-up shops are selling clothing, kids’ fashion, men’s wear, abayas, jewellery and accessories, others are selling art, furniture and chocolate.
The initiative, Al Ibrahim said, is part of QTA’s partnership with Qatar Development Bank to connect entrepreneurs with QTA’s popular festivals allowing them to broaden their market access and visibility while enriching the festival’s offering.
There will be rotation throughout the festival period to give chance to more entrepreneurs to take part, he said.
The local entrepreneurs participating in the festival were chosen according to their performance based on databases of QDB, Qatar Business Incubation Center (QBIC), and Bedaya Center for Entrepreneurship and Career Development, he explained.
“After the festival, we are going to assess their performance based on their experience with QDB and our experience with them and hopefully invite them in future festivals as well,” he said.
Al Ibrahim is optimistic the pop-up shops will be sustained as a permanent feature of Shop Qatar for its upcoming editions.
Response to the inaugural festival has so far been very good based on sales and turnout of visitors in the malls.
“We are expecting bigger numbers in the coming weeks specially on the number of visitors from the Gulf region,” he said.
With regard to the entertainment element of the festival, he said ticket sales to the shows are doing well including the Doha Comedy Festival.
“We want to invite everyone to grab this opportunity to enjoy the different shows the festival offers,” he ended.
