Qatar’s Residents Squeezed As World Cup Rental Demand Soars

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Where to sleep? It’s among the biggest questions facing fans traveling to tiny Qatar for the World Cup amid a feverish rush for rooms in Doha. Some will sleep on cruise ships. Others will camp in the desert. Others will fly in from Dubai and elsewhere.

But in the run-up to the world’s biggest sporting event in the world’s smallest host country, the struggle for housing is hardly limited to tourists. Qatar’s real estate frenzy has sent rents skyrocketing and priced long-term residents out of their own homes, leaving many in the lurch.

“Landlords are taking full advantage of the situation and there’s nothing in place to support the people who already live here,” said Mariam, a 30-year-old British resident whose landlord refused to renew her annual contract in September, then quadrupled her monthly rent — from 5,000 Qatari riyals (some $1,370) to 20,000 riyals ($5,490). Unable to afford the increase, she had no choice but to move out and is now staying at a friend’s place.

“It’s really demoralizing,” she said, giving only her first name for fear of reprisals, like other renters interviewed in the autocratic nation. Others spoke on the condition of anonymity for the same reason.

Residents in the country, where expats outnumber locals nine to one, say the surging demand and shortage of rooms ahead of the World Cup has empowered landlords to raise rents by over 40% in many cases on short notice, forcing tenants to pack up and face an uncertain future.

The Qatari government acknowledged the “increased demand for accommodation” and encouraged tenants who believe they have been wronged to file a complaint with the government’s rental disputes committee.

Some 1.2 million fans are expected to descend next month on the Gulf Arab sheikhdom, which has never before hosted an event on the scale of the World Cup.

Local organizers have sought to dispel fears of an accommodation crisis, pointing out that Qatar has set aside 130,000 rooms, available through the official website. The rooms, which are in hotels, resorts, specially built housing and three cruise ships at the port, start at around $80, they say, although it’s not clear how many low-budget options there are.

A price ceiling applies to 80% of the rooms, the government said in a statement to The Associated Press. It did not respond to questions about whether and how the cap has been implemented, and the ceiling — which is about $780 for a five-star resort room — can go higher, depending on the room’s amenities.

Many long-term occupants in hotels and apartments say they’re being driven out to make room for players, staffers and fans.

“You’re committed to either staying and paying the extra or leaving and not knowing whether you’re going to have anywhere to live,” said a British teacher whose landlord hiked his rent by 44%. The teacher sold all his furniture and is now crashing at a friend’s place, worried sick about his future.

Other renters renewing their leases reported signs appearing on their apartments marking the buildings as “chosen by the government to host the 2022 World Cup guests and events.”

The notice, seen by the AP, orders tenants to vacate so the building can be handed over for maintenance ahead of the tournament.

Local organizers have signed a deal with French hospitality company Accor to set aside some 45,000 rooms for fans.

Omar al-Jaber, the executive director of housing at Qatar’s Supreme Committee of Delivery and Legacy, said the government played no role in contract terminations affecting long-term tenants.

“To be honest with you, we are not controlling what happens in the market,” he told the AP.

A 48-year-old French pilates instructor said that when she signed her lease a year ago, her landlord promised he wouldn’t kick her out during the World Cup. Yet just days before her lease renewal, she got a devastating message: Her landlord couldn’t rent her the place for “personal reasons.” The next day, her friend saw her room advertised on Airbnb for nearly $600 more a month than she had paid.

“You’re kicking out long-term residents for a one-month event?” she said. “People are angry. It’s very disruptive.”

Residents scrambling to find new homes because of the rent hikes say it’s nearly impossible to find suitable places within their budgets. Most two-bedroom apartments on the Pearl, an artificial island off Doha, go for over $1,000 a night on Airbnb. Luxury apartments on the site can fetch a staggering $200,000 a month.

“The accommodations that are left for us are not good at all,” said a 32-year-old Indian resident whose monthly rent will increase by over $400 next month. “Suddenly if we can afford it, there’s no kitchen, it’s too far away or it’s divided by partitions. It’s very disturbing.”

Energy-rich Qatar has spared no expense in its grand plans for the first World Cup in the Arab world, promising that locals and expat residents will enjoy a lasting legacy, too.

“This tournament is for everyone who’s living in Qatar,” said al-Jaber. “We would like everyone to enjoy this tournament.”

But some say the tight squeeze shows the joyous event comes at a cost.
“It’s costing me a lot of stress and money,” said the British teacher who had to leave his apartment after seven years. “I’m having to pay for the World Cup.”

Qatar World Cup Ticket Sales To Open, Lowest $70 Globally

Fans can start registering to buy Qatar World Cup tickets on Wednesday with prices for visitors starting at around $70, one-third cheaper than the tournament in Russia.

The category-three tickets on international sale will be 250 Qatari riyals ($69), two people with knowledge of the prices said Tuesday, compared to $105 for the equivalent in 2018. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ticketing process.

The cheapest tickets — in category four only for Qatari residents — will cost 40 Qatari riyals ($11), the people said. The intended ticket prices will be the cheapest at a World Cup since $3 seats in Mexico — based on 1986 exchange rates — and half the price of those made available to locals at the equivalent of $22 in Russia in 2018.

The low entry point for tickets in Qatar could help to provide access to the low-paid migrant worker population for the Nov. 21-Dec. 18 tournament. The cheapest tickets at the 2019 world track and field championships were 60 Qatari riyals ($17) and entry was eventually made free for workers to fill empty seats.

FIFA tickets will be distributed through a regulated process rather than an open sale with the full range of prices still to be announced. Supporters requesting to attend matches at the Middle East’s first World Cup will only discover if they are successful based on a random draw at the conclusion of the first application phase which runs through Feb. 8.

The ticket process is beginning with only 13 of the 32 slots at the tournament filled and qualifying not concluding until the intercontinental playoffs in June.

FIFA aims to generate $500 million from hospitality rights and ticket sales from the World Cup, according to the governing body’s most recent financial report.

Unlike previous World Cups, little travel will be required once in Qatar with the eight newly built stadiums within a 30-mile radius of Doha.

Travel during the tournament figures to be the shortest since the 1954 tournament in Switzerland, but hotel availability could be tight.

Local organizers have reserved most hotels in Qatar so there was no availability showing on Tuesday to book for the duration of the tournament when searching online.

Rooms in hotels, apartments and cruise liners will be made available via a website later this year. Only around 90,000 rooms will be made available to the public with 40,000 set aside for teams, officials, sponsors and media.

While camping in the desert had previously been touted as a means of finding space for fans, that is now being downplayed as a significant option. There will be 4,000 cabins on cruise ships that will dock in Doha for the tournament.

Qatar Airways, a FIFA sponsor, is already selling packages including flights, hotels and tickets guaranteed to follow your country.

World Cup organizers have also said more than 1.2 million visitors will come. The group stage features 32 teams with games across 12 days when Qatar anticipates 559,000 flying in with a peak of 276,000 ticket holders around Nov. 27 and 28 requiring an estimated 128,000 rooms.

Some fans could still be deterred from flying to the World Cup after a decade of criticism of Qatar’s treatment of the migrant workers, who are largely from southwest Asia and have been relied on to build up the infrastructure since winning the FIFA hosting rights in 2010.

World Cup Hotel Shortage For Supporters Planning Qatar Trips

Qatar wants to attract 1.2 million people to the World Cup but will struggle to accommodate many of them.

With ticket sales beginning in January, supporters are in for a shock when they look for somewhere to stay: Qatar already looks sold out.

Extensive searches by The Associated Press of leading hotel chains and aggregation websites found only one property with availability for the entire tournament which runs from Nov. 21 to Dec. 18.

Most rooms have already been block-booked by World Cup organizers, in part to prevent price gouging, but mainly to ensure availability for teams, FIFA officials, sponsors and media.

“If a team is qualified, it’s now that people are trying to find accommodation,” Ronan Evain, executive director of the Football Supporters Europe group, told the AP. “And at the moment there is nothing.”

Qatar’s Supreme Committee, which in charge of World Cup planning, has provided the first details to the AP acknowledging the accommodation challenges after weeks of questions.

Only approximately 90,000 rooms will be made available to the public via a website. That is around the same number of fans from the United States who had tickets for the 2018 World Cup which was spread across Russia and had hotels available on the open market.

Yet the AP has been told that surveys and data modeling by Qatari officials based on travel to previous World Cups show they now anticipate 850,000 overseas visitors will require rooms. World Cup organizers have also said more than 1.2 million visitors will come. The most recent data from the Qatar Tourism Authority said there are 33,208 rooms in hotels and hotel apartments.

What Qatar boasts as being its key selling point — the most compact World Cup ever with the eight stadiums within a 30-mile radius of Doha — could prove the barrier to visitors going or being able to make lengthy trips.

“It becomes a bit of a dystopian World Cup if the stadium could be anywhere in the world ... in the middle of the desert and then you just fly in and out,” Evain said. “That’s certainly not the experience of the majority of fans are looking for.”

Despite the pressures on hotel stock in Qatar, there will be no system in place to equitably split the rooms between fans of participating nations or prevent them being bought up for the entire tournament en masse.

“There will be no ballot,” the Supreme Committee told the AP. “Visitors will be able to book on the accommodation portal on a first come, first served basis.”

Further restricting the availability, Qatar will not allow one night stays for fans to make short trips and free up rooms for others. No prices have been disclosed.

“As is standard practice in many events around the world minimum and maximum lengths of stay will be applied,” the Supreme Committee said. “This will be a minimum of two nights for the group stages — the same as in Russia. Long stay bookings will be possible, and even more so for visitors keen to stay for the entire tournament.”

There will be 4,000 cabins on cruise ships that will dock in Doha for the tournament. While camping in the desert had previously been touted as a means of finding space for fans, that is now being downplayed as a significant option.

“The campsite availability will make up a small percentage of the overall accommodation options in Qatar,” the Supreme Committee said. “We have always viewed the ability to camp as an offering of traditional Qatari hospitality, not as a solution to speculation around accommodation shortages.”

Flying in and out of the country for each match could prove to be the only viable option for many fans.

“We might end up in a situation where, at least for the European, and some of the Asian teams, the best option for fans will be to travel in and out on matchday which would come with a cost,” Evain said. “But also it would come with quite an extraordinary environmental footprint.”

Direct return flights from London and Paris for next November and December currently exceed $1,000; from New York it’s more than double that price and from Sao Paulo even higher.

“If the focus remains on premium accommodation and if the flight prices remain where they are,” Evain said, “then there will be people that will just not be able to afford traveling to Qatar.

“We know that FIFA operates on the basis that there is this fantastic fan base somewhere in the world that is ready to pay a fortune to follow the World Cup. But previous tournament don’t show that. There are games at every tournament that are not sold out.”

The group stage features 32 teams with games across 12 days when Qatar anticipates 559,000 flying in with a peak of 276,000 ticket holders around Nov. 27 and 28 requiring an estimated 128,000 rooms — more than the country’s entire hotel stock for fans.

Just taking Nov. 27, after searching leading travel portals, only three hotels could be booked on the open market on the internet. The cheapest available rooms there would cost $1,028, $1,431 or $5,276 for the night.

The Supreme Committee pointed out that Moscow and St. Petersburg did not sell out the hotels reserved by organizers, but those are cities larger than Qatar with far more rooms.

“No one is seriously arguing that Qatar should build a million hotel rooms,” Evain said. “There is probably some sort of middle ground and solution, temporary housing or anything like this, but for the moment it’s hard to see this happening.”

When trying to book for the entire tournament on travel portals, the only room the AP could find on the open market was $1,056 a night at a four-star hotel near to the airport through Agoda.

The Accor, Hilton and Intercontinental, Marriott and Wyndham chains, which run most of the leading hotel brands, are all showing no rooms available during the World Cup at their 28 properties in and around Doha — the only built-up areas in the oil-and-gas rich desert nation.

The lifting of the economic, diplomatic and travel boycott of Doha by Gulf rivals does open up the possibility of fans commuting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia or Dubai, which are both about a 90-minute flight from Qatar’s single airport.

“They are countries with an even worse human rights record than Qatar,” Evain said.

Some fans will also be put off by the Gulf nations’ anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Even opting to go to Qatar at all could present fans with a moral quandary given the well-documented poor working conditions and human rights violations which have only been partially addressed with changes to labor laws after scrutiny of the abuses and deaths of the low-paid, largely migrant worker population building facilities for the World Cup, including hotels.

“It’s a dilemma every fan will have to deal with,” Evain said.

Most World Cup Qualifying Games In Asia Postponed Until May

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The Asian Football Confederation announced on Friday that the majority of the region’s 2022 World Cup qualifying matches in March will be postponed to May and June — with a few exceptions that include Japan, Australia and Saudi Arabia.

“Taking into consideration the existing travel and quarantine restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic across the continent, the AFC and FIFA have jointly agreed to postpone the majority of the upcoming Asian qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022,” the AFC said in a statement.

There are four games that will go ahead. On March 25, Saudi Arabia will host Yemen in Riyadh while Tajikistan and Mongolia will also play. Five days later, Mongolia will travel to Tokyo to take on Japan and Australia heads to Nepal.

No second-round qualification matches have been played since November 2019 because of multiple postponements due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. The race is now on to finish that second round, with most of the 40 teams involved having four games remaining before the current deadline of June 15.

The AFC said it has been working with member associations grouped together to help them make their own arrangements and play out the remaining games at one venue.

On Thursday, the Korea Football Association (KFA) said that it has held discussions with the AFC as well as representatives of its Group H opponents: North Korea, Lebanon, Turkmenistan and Sri Lanka.

“The AFC decided to postpone the qualifiers from March to June after hosting a video conference with all Group H national associations,” a KFA official said.

South Korea is interested in hosting the remaining games in its group. “We are considering it,” said the official, adding that applications have to be sent to the AFC by March 5, with the final decision on the host venues announced ten days later.

The winners of the eight groups in the second round, along with the four best-performing second-place teams, will progress to the third round of qualification that is scheduled to start in September.