A semi-governmental Qatari group is going to build multiple hotels to attract conservative Muslim vacationers in Turkey with a total investment of at least $500 million, Today's Zaman quoted the Anatolia news agency as reporting on Thursday.
According to the agency's report, Mohamed Johar, a board member at the Doha-based Retaj Marketing & Project Management, said Turkey's economic achievements in the past decade have played the biggest role in convincing them to do the planned investment. "Particularly since it became the world's 16th largest economy and 6th largest in Europe has attracted all eyes to the country. Inspired by this development, we have taken the decision to invest in Turkey," he was quoted as saying. Johar added that their decision also included making joint investments in third countries with Turkish businesses.
Retaj, which also has operations in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt and Kenya, has 20 hotels offering Islamic vacations to its guests in Qatar and elsewhere. It was founded five years ago and owned by five different institutions in the Middle Eastern nation. Johar said they are presently engaged in talks with Turkish construction company Koray İnşaat to carry out the planned projects in Turkey. He added that İstanbul is certainly going to be one of the provinces in their investment and the northwestern province of Bursa may be another location, but they have yet to make a final decision on where else they will build hotels in the country.
Following two economic crises in the early 2000s, the Turkish economy has grown at an annual rate of over 5 percent between 2002 and 2010. Even surpassing that performance, its gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 10.2 percent in the first half of this year, making it the fastest growing economy worldwide. Thanks to its speedy recovery from the global financial crisis and return to strong economic growth, the country has also become a major destination for foreign direct investment. It has received $10.9 billion in FDI in the first nine months of this year, more than twice as much it did in the same period a year earlier.