The walk-in-store, spread over two floors and located close to Doha International Airport, offers a wide range of over 600 branded products covering fashion apparels and accessories, fragrances, luxury watches, jewellery, electronics, toys, luggage, household appliances, gadgets, sporting goods and much, much more, which members can ‘purchase’ using their Avios.

Other items include Apple products such as iPods and iPads, exercise equipment, gaming consoles and digital SLR cameras.

From a Mini Cooper ‘priced’ at just over 7.5 million Avios, a popular fragrance for only 10,500 Avios, or a pool table on offer for 202,000 Avios, the choice is wide and varied. Gold card members will pay a special Avios rate on all products.

Qatar’s Civil Aviation Authority Chairman, H.E Abdul Aziz Al Noaimi and Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker officially opened the new boutique at a media reception today. Al Baker said Oryx Galleria was a unique retail proposition, different from the airline’s airport and in-flight duty free business.

Privilege Club members can redeem their Avios on any in-store products, effectively giving them another redemption option aside from flights with Qatar Airways and partner airlines.

Oryx Galleria is Qatar Airways’ latest business venture as the loyalty retail shop boosts the airline’s wide-ranging business units that already include hotels, duty free and airport operations. The new boutique is located within Qatar Airways’ expanded corporate offices on Airport Road.

Al Baker said: “This new showroom has a wide selection of the world’s finest brand and product categories, designed to provide Privilege Club members with a world-class customer experience, as well as an alternative to redeeming Avios on air tickets.”

“At Qatar Airways, we always keep looking for ways to bring additional value to our customers. This latest initiative reinforces our commitment to provide our most loyal customers with new and unique benefits that are fitting for being members of the best frequent flyer programme in the region.

“Customer research has shown our loyalty club members are looking for more redemption options and greater flexibility, so Oryx Galleria was conceived not as a paper catalogue but a real boutique where customers can walk in and browse through the large variety of products available for redemption using their Avios.”

Since launching 12 years ago, Qatar Airways’ Privilege Club has firmly established itself as one of the leading frequent flyer reward programmes in the industry, with extremely generous benefits.

Privilege Club has a constantly growing list of partners and an ever-expanding array of benefits with leading travel and hospitality service providers, including many international hotel chains and car rental companies.

Qatar Airways has seen rapid growth in just 15 years of operation, currently operating a modern fleet of 105 aircraft to 112 key business and leisure destinations across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, North America and South America.

As part of its 2012 expansion programme, Qatar Airways recently launched flights to the European capital cities of Tbilisi in Georgia and Baku in Azerbaijan.
 
The Doha-based carrier will launch scheduled flights to a further seven destinations this year – Kigali (Rwanda) from March 21; Zagreb (Croatia) from May 9; Perth (Australia) from July 3; with dates yet to be announced for other new routes – Mombasa (Kenya), Zanzibar (Tanzania), Helsinki (Finland), and Gassim (Saudi Arabia).