The 2022 FIFA World Cup is the first international sports event that is completely open to the audience since the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
A large number of fans came from all over the world to watch the game. According to the estimation of Dubai Sports Committee, Qatar will welcome more than one million new tourists during the World Cup. For the smallest host country with a population of only 3 million, how to properly arrange these fans is no small challenge.
According to Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate company, Qatar is expected to provide 45,000 hotel rooms in early November. In addition, Qatar has provided a lot of supplementary accommodation by building eight temporary fan villages, giant cruise ships, apartments and villas. But overall, there are less than 100,000 disposable rooms.
From luxury hotel suites costing more than $20,000 per night to simple resettlement houses temporarily built in the desert costing more than $100, Qatar offers accommodation options at different price points. According to official data, the cabin in the free zone’s vermicelli village starts at $207 per night, and the caravan city has options as low as $115. In Al Khor fan village, which is dominated by Arab camping tents, the cost per night exceeds 400 dollars.
However, this is not enough to meet the huge and diverse accommodation needs of these fans.
Haidar Haji is a construction engineer from Kuwait. He lives in tent village in Al Khor, 40 minutes’ drive north of downtown Doha, Qatar. He told the Associated Press that the hotel was too expensive to stay here. The tent was unlocked and there was no beer supply. It is really a “painful thing” for him to get to Doha from here every morning, but he has no choice.
Brazilian soccer fan Anna Santos and her husband plan to stay in Qatar for five days. Hotels in Doha are too expensive for them, and they don’t want to live in a “strange” fan village in the suburbs. Finally, they found an “inexpensive” high-class hotel in Dubai. After watching the game in Doha, they flew to Dubai for the night. “The flight is very crowded, and we are not the only ones who do this.”
In fact, due to the high hotel prices, scarce accommodation and alcohol restrictions in Doha, many fans, like Anna, choose to live in Dubai, the neighboring United Arab Emirates.
Alcohol control is more relaxed.
Dubai is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates and the economic and financial center in the Middle East. According to hotel data company STR, Dubai can provide more than 140,000 hotel rooms.
Dubai is actually ready to receive World Cup fans. It tries to attract tourists with the selling point of “freer, denser and more luxurious tourist attractions than Qatar”. As early as August, Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai International Airport, said that Dubai was the “main gateway” of the World Cup, and he predicted that the number of tourists in Dubai would surpass Qatar.
When it comes to treating alcoholic beverages, Dubai really needs to be a little more relaxed. Qatar is a country that strictly controls alcohol, and it is illegal to drink alcohol in public. According to FIFA’s statement, during the period of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 in 2022, all eight stadiums in Doha and its surrounding areas will be banned from selling alcoholic beverages, which can only be purchased in designated official fan areas and several franchised hotels. This makes many foreign fans quite unhappy.
Dubai allows people to buy alcoholic beverages in some areas. At the same time, Dubai’s lively nightclubs, bars and other tourist attractions are bursting with popularity, and the prices are lower than Doha. Even in Abu Dhabi, the conservative capital of the United Arab Emirates, tourists can buy alcohol without a license in liquor stores.
Bernard boateng Duah, a doctor from Ghana, bought an all-inclusive Dubai hotel package, which included match-day flights and unlimited food and alcohol. “I want more freedom, and the experience in Dubai is more interesting to me,” he said.
At the same time, Dubai has also made great efforts to create a world cup atmosphere. From the star posters and fan areas that can be seen everywhere, to the live broadcast of the open-air stadium with 4D sound effects and a 330-square-meter giant screen, and the official BudX FIFA fan festival in Dubai Port.
Half-hour flight on match day
Convenient traffic conditions also attracted fans. It takes about 650 kilometers to drive from Dubai to Doha, and it takes about 70 minutes to fly directly. Usually there are less than 10 scheduled flights between the two places, but now it has increased to more than 40, and passengers can take a flight every 30-50 minutes.
In order to meet the needs of fans, Qatar Airways and low-cost airlines of the United Arab Emirates launched “Match Day flights”. Passengers can book the same-day round-trip flights from Dubai or nearby Oman and fly back to their accommodation directly after watching the game in Qatar. Similar air shuttle buses have been organized in nearby Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Dubai International Airport said in mid-November that during the one-month World Cup, as many as 120 shuttle flights will enter and leave Dubai World Center International Airport every day.
On November 21st, Ghaith Al Ghaith, CEO of Dubai Airlines, said that almost all the shuttle flights of the company to Doha were running at full capacity on the day of the competition. “This mode seems to be going to continue in the next few weeks.”
In fact, the concept of air shuttle bus is not new in the Gulf region. Dubai is famous for its luxurious exotic experience, and people from wealthy Middle Eastern countries nearby often fly to this shiny metropolis for drinking and having fun.
Luxury experience of yachts and private jets
Dubai’s income from the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar comes not only from hotel accommodation and restaurants, but also from the demand for luxury services. Here, visitors can rent a super yacht with tens of thousands of dollars every night, watch the games and sail in the Persian Gulf.
Xclexclusive Yachts, the largest private yacht leasing company in the United Arab Emirates, provides the most luxurious sea experience. A three-story super yacht can be rented for $20,000 per night, with an air deck, a bar, an air lounge, five cabins and Michelin-starred chefs providing food.
“We expect yacht bookings to increase by more than 300% in November and December, mainly because tourists from the World Cup and Qatar will also come to Dubai for leisure,” amit Patel, the company’s managing director, told Doha News in October.
Another value-added service is the surge in demand for private jets.
Take Jetex, a private charter company in Dubai, for example. They have launched two packages for World Cup fans. One is a private jet service for 10 people, and the price is 240,000 UAE dirhams (about 468,000 RMB); The other is a seat with a unit price of 29,000 dirhams (about 57,000 RMB).
Ian Moore, chief commercial officer of VistaJet, another private charter company, said that he had booked more than 70 business jet flights from his company to Qatar to watch the game.
Taufiq Rahim, a researcher at Mohammed bin Rashid Government College in Dubai, concluded in an interview with a reporter from American Consumer News and Business Channel that Dubai is only an hour’s flight from Qatar, and it also has perfect tourism infrastructure and simple entry requirements, which makes it an ideal base for World Cup fans.