In late 2021, the Associated Press news agency did some serious pre tournament research,
and checked all the leading hotel chains in Qatar as well as the aggregation sites, trying to find
somewhere to stay for the entire World Cup, which will run from 21st November to 18th December.
They found just one room in the whole country
and that was neither cheap - over a thousand dollars a night at a four-star hotel - nor
a particular nice place to stay - located as it was next to Doha’s very busy airport.
Meanwhile the Qatari authorities, having looked at past World Cups,
are reckoning on receiving 850,000 visitors over the four weeks of the tournament,
not to mention all the officials, the media, the teams and their support staff.
So where is everyone going to sleep at the Qatar World Cup?
Things aren’t going to be quite as bad as they appear.
Associated Press recognised that most of the rooms had already been block booked by the tournament
organisers to secure the rooms they needed for FIFA and assorted football bureaucrats,
sponsors and their friends, and the international media.
It has also allowed them to stop early price gouging from hoteliers.
Many of these rooms have now been made available as part of Qatar Airways,
all-in packages that combine flights, rooms and match tickets.
Nonetheless, the numbers are looking tricky.
For the first two weeks of the tournament with all 32 teams and their fans in play, organisers
are estimating that 559,00 visitors will come to Qatar.
Peak demand will be around the 27th and 28th November when they expect,
amongst others, 276,000 ticket holders to be looking for accommodation.
Of course, people won’t be staying for just one night or just one game,
though many will be sharing a room, so the number of rooms required on
any one night not be the same as the number of match day tickets.
Taking all that into account the Qatari tourist authorities are reckoning on
needing a peak supply of 130,000 hotel rooms and other rental spaces.
Still quite a lot for a country of just 3 million people.
The numbers increase every day, but as of Spring 2022
there are around just 33-34,000 hotel rooms in Qatar.
The country continues to build hotels at a frenzied rate, and the Supreme Council is
hoping that as many as another 25,000 rooms will be available by November,
though that seems pretty optimistic. Even then 60,000 is a long way
short of the target, and the rooms are overwhelmingly in expensive 5-star hotels.
So, what other options are going to be available?
In the run up to the FIFA Arab Cup, held in Qatar in December
2021, the organisers launched their “host a fan” campaign.
Qataris were encouraged to take a visiting fan or two into their homes, as guests or lodgers.
In the battle between Qatari’s deep tradition of hospitality and their privacy and conservatism,
the latter seem to have won. Take up has so low that the organisers aren’t releasing figures.
A better bet will be the two large cruise ships that will
be docked in the city’s port with views of Doha's skyscraper skyline. They will
provide over 4,000 rooms, with a two-person room available for £3000 for six nights.
If that seems too steep, a more affordable option will be camping in the desert outside
Doha. After consulting with the organisers of the Coachella and Glastonbury festivals
the Qataris are building a small tent city, accommodating a few thousand fans,
about an hour south of Doha on flat piece of desert between the sand dunes and the Gulf.
Economically it’s an attractive option, but as the Supreme Council said:
“We have always viewed the ability to camp as an offering of traditional Qatari hospitality,
not as a solution to …accommodation shortages,”
Madinatna, a new satellite city about 15 miles outside
Doha, looks like its will be doing much of the heavy lifting on this issue
Two dozen hotels are nearing completion, as is a huge complex of rental apartments that will,
organisers claim, house up to 27,000 fans. They will, unfortunately , be completely hemmed in a by
a whole series of five lane motorways, slip roads and overpasses, but there will be beds.
Call it another 15, 000 rooms and we are up to about 80,000 in total…still not enough
Qatar Tourism’s "holiday home" plan is encouraging the locals to apply for licenses to rent out their
homes on AirBnB, but the private market is looking very expensive. The best Sky News
could find, for example, was the offer of a four-bedroom apartment at £20,000 a night.
Maybe at that kind of money there will be enough private rentals to fill the gap
…but then there may have to be other solutions.
The Qataris remain optimistic, but at the same time they are quietly refurbishing
Doha’s old airport, to increase capacity during the World Cup.
With accommodation so tight they are expecting fans to commute from
other cities in the gulf like Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE or Muscat in Oman.
But either way it’s going to be tricky….
That said the Qataris are flexible, well-resourced and highly averse to
bad publicity, like visitors without somewhere to sleep or World Cup stadiums going empty.
One imagines they will find some kind solution to this seeming shortfall of rooms
and they remain adamant that all will be alright on the night.