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Despite the requirement to provide a negative Covid-19 test to enter Qatar, flight bookings to the country for travel to the soccer World Cup, between November 14 and December 24, have seen a huge boom, according to airline-based ForwardKeys data. tickets issued, adding day trips.
Flight bookings to Qatar from countries including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Spain, Japan, France and the United States have lately exceeded ten times the volume of pre-pandemic levels, according to knowledge analytics firm ForwardKeys.
The most productive performance market of the World Cup era is the United Arab Emirates, where bookings are 103 times higher lately than in 2016. The reference era for the UAE is 2016, as Qatar’s diplomatic crisis halted direct flights between Qatar and the UAE between 2017 and 2021.
Bookings from Mexico increased 79-fold through 2019, while bookings from Argentina increased 77-fold. Bookings from Spain and Japan increased 53 and 46 times, respectively.
The shortage of accommodation in Qatar and the availability of round-trip flights from UAE cities will allow many other people to stay in the UAE and fly on the right days. The flight time between Dubai and Doha is just over 60 minutes.
The UAE’s hotel market is expected to grow 25 by 2030, with an additional 48,000 rooms adding to the country’s broad portfolio of 200,000 key rooms, global consultancy Knight Frank noted in September.
Dubai is expected to take the lion’s share of that total, with 76 percent of all new rooms coming to the emirate, which already has more than 130,000 rooms, Knight Frank Fother noted.
Currently, day trips account for 4% of all arrivals to Qatar World Cup, 85% of which come from the UAE.
The World Cup is expected to gain advantages across the Gulf region, as flight bookings to countries in the festival region are 16% ahead of 2019 and, for the early stages of the tournament, 61% ahead of schedule.
Many World Cup visitors would also go to other destinations in the region, as the number of visitors staying at least two nights in Qatar and spending at least two more nights in some other Gulf country is 16 times higher than before the pandemic.
Ready to capture 65% of upcoming visits, Dubai is the biggest beneficiary of this trend, followed by Abu Dhabi with 14% and Jeddah would capture 8% of those visits.
U. S. travelers account for 26% of “regional tourists,” followed by travelers from Canada at 10% and British tourists at 9%. About 32% of those arriving in Dubai are said to be from the United States.
The FIFA World Cup is one of the exciting maxims out there, so much so that other Gulf destinations will benefit, not just the host country, Qatar.
In terms of tourism promotion, the World Cup will put Qatar in the media spotlight and make it a more established destination, not just as a major hub for intercontinental air traffic.
“Normally, only 3% of trips to Doha are destined to stay in the country; and 97% come with the next correspondence. However, at the World Cup, only about 27% have Qatar as their final destination,” said Olivier Ponti, vice president. of Insights in ForwardKeys.
Ponti said the UAE would also gain particular advantages from the tournament, as it has more hotel accommodation than Qatar and two global hub airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Tags: abu dhabi, asia monthly, covid-19, doha, dubai, gulf carriers, qatar, qatar global cup, united arab emirates, united states
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