By Sachin Kumar
DOHA: Online ticketing in Qatar got a boost last year with surge in demand for online bookings. People in the country booked close to 100,000 tickets per month for entertainment-related events in 2015. The tickets booked were mainly for movies, other entertainment events, and sports.
Online booking of tickets saves time and efforts of viewers which is encouraging people to go online to book tickets. Increased use of smart phones and tablet computers has also boosted online buying.
Currently, there are three major players in Qatar’s online ticket booking for entertainment-related events. Q-tickets is the market leader in Qatar’s online ticket booking market commanding a market share of around 80 percent. Virgin Tickets is another player in Qatar that provides tickets for events and not for movies while Novo Cinemas has a portal for its tickets.
“We are doing about 100,000 tickets per month. In the last two years, we have sold over 1.5 million tickets in Qatar,” said Dr Tejinder Singh, Founder of Q-Tickets.com.
“Q-tickets aims to provide a single online space for people of Qatar to discover and purchase tickets to movies, cultural and sports events. With that vision in mind we started with online booking of movie tickets.”
“Using the website movie lovers can now book movie tickets online for City Center, Villaggio, The Mall, Landmark, Royal Plaza and Westend Park and tickets for upcoming events, concerts and night life,” he added.
Compared to other countries, Qatar’s e-commerce sector is in infancy and has huge growth
potential. E-commerce market in Qatar, currently pegged at $1bn, is likely to double in the next five years.
“There are tremendous opportunities in e-commerce sector in Qatar. People in Qatar have so far focused on traditional business such as real estate, banking, telecom and oil and gas,” said Dr Singh.
“If you look at the consumer side, there is not much technology available to people. People still have to call or go physically to avail many services. So there is a lot of space of aggregators,” said Singh.
According to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ictQatar), this market is expected to grow at Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17 percent over the next five years.
E-commerce refers to the use of Internet to conduct business transactions between individuals and organisations.
Sale of airline tickets and consumer electronics occupy around 40 percent share in Qatar’s e-commerce market. Air travel market has 22 percent share while consumer electronics has 18 percent share in Qatar’s e-commerce market.
The Peninsula
