Football continues to attract tourists to Qatar

Alexandre Brum/Ag. Enquadrar / S/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

• H1 tourists up 28%
• 2.6m international visitors
• Rugby and basketball targeted

Qatar’s strategy of staging major sporting events continues to reap economic benefits, as regional football tournaments help to attract tourists to the Gulf state.

Visitor numbers rose 28 percent in the first half of 2024, benefitting its hotels and wider hospitality businesses.

A total of 2.6 million international tourists visited in the first six months of this year, according to a report by Qatar Tourism. This was a significant increase from 2 million in the same period in 2023 and well above the pre-pandemic when 1 million visited in the first half of 2019. 

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The state has staged a number of major football tournaments in recent years, including the 2021 Fifa Arab Cup, the 2022 Fifa World Cup, the 2023 AFC Asian Cup in January and the AFC U-23 Asian Cup in May.

During January, when the AFC Asian Cup was staged in Doha, a total of 703,000 international visitors arrived in Qatar, the highest monthly total on record.

The majority of arrivals came from Saudi Arabia (29 percent), followed by India (8 percent) and Bahrain (5 percent).  

Visitors from the GCC made up 43 percent of visitors in the first six months of this year. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar in 2017, but the embargo was removed in January 2021 and diplomatic relations were restored.

Since then tourism arrivals from the GCC have risen from 27,000 in the first half of 2021 to 1.15 million in the same period this year.

International visitors to Qatar from India, China, the UK and Russia have also increased substantially, rising to 1.5 million in H1, up from 940,000 in the same period in 2019 before the pandemic.

The AFC championship has been good news for hoteliers, with revenue up 37 percent year on year. They have hiked their daily hotel rates by 7 percent this year to an average of $454 per night. At luxury five-star hotels, the average of rose to $630 per night. 

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Occupancy rates have also increased 16 percentage points year on year to an average of 69 percent. The highest performing hotels were one and two-star venues, which achieved an average of 89 percent occupancy during the period.

Looking to capitalise further on sports, Qatar is now targeting rugby and it was reported in June that it was in talks to stage rugby’s Nations Championship.

Doha’s sport-focused Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, which was created before the 2022 World Cup, proposed an £800 million ($1 billion) eight-year deal to stage a six-match finals series which would involve all 12 tier one nations, starting from 2026.

The new biannual rugby union competition would feature the current Six Nations: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy and France; the Sanzaar union: South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina – and two other teams, most likely Fiji and Japan.

“Sports tourism is an intrinsic part of Qatar’s national development plans,” said Simon Chadwick, professor of sport and geopolitical economy at Skema Business School in France.

“In bidding for rugby’s Nations Championship, Qatar is probably trying to secure a first mover advantage ahead of Dubai and other regional rivals,” he said.

Qatar is also set to host the Fiba Basketball World Cup 2027, which will include 32 teams from across the globe.