DOHA (Reuters) – Fans have booked accommodation in more than 90,000 rooms, tents, apartments, villas and portacabins on each of the peak days of the World Cup in Qatar, organisers said Wednesday, adding that at least 25,000 rooms are still available.
“The market is still open and (fans) have enough time to decide and to book,” said Omar Al-Jaber, executive director of accommodations for the Supreme Committee of Delivery and Legacy (SC), organisers of the tournament that begins on Nov. 20.
He stood in a giant tent that will serve as one of seven dining halls for a fan village set up on a stretch of desert hemmed in by expressways south of the capital Doha.
For $200 a night, fans can rent one of 6,000 brightly-painted aluminium portacabins, arranged in long, straight rows. There is a temporary supermarket, outdoor screens to watch games and astroturf to keep the dust down.
After the tournament, Qatar will donate the portacabins to “poor countries” to be used as houses, Al-Jaber said.
Qatar is expecting 1.2 million visitors during the month-long tournament, with the peak number expected between Nov. 24 and 28, during the busy group stage.
On average, fans will spend seven nights in Qatar, Al-Jaber said.
Organisers introduced more than 500 shuttle flights a day allowing fans to stay in neighbouring cities like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, alleviating concerns tiny Qatar would face an accommodation shortage.
With a population of 3 million, Qatar has fewer than 31,000 hotel rooms so organisers identified a total of 130,000 rooms in alternative accommodation, converting all available real estate stock into temporary housing.
Accor, Europe’s largest hotels operator, is managing most of the apartments and villas. Three cruise ships will dock at Doha’s port to provide more than 5,000 rooms. Some fans will stay in 1,000 modern tents on a man-made island north of Doha, Al-Jaber said.
In case inclement weather like sandstorms or rain make tents or fan villages uninhabitable, organisers have arranged “backup rooms in a different area”, especially for people who opted to stay in an open-space area like a fan village, Al-Jaber said.
(Reporting by Imad Creidi and Andrew Mills, writing by Andrew Mills; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
