Doha’s hotels, tourism suffer in Eid holiday due to Arab sanctions

DOHA (Reuters) – A boycott by four Arab nations that accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism is squeezing the tourism sector leading Doha’s hotels – which would normally be full for Eid al-Fitr – to see steep falls in occupancy.

A Reuters survey of five major hotels found average occupancy was around 57% at the start of the Eid festival on Sunday, which marks the end of the Ramadan fasting month when friends and families eat and pray together and take holidays.

“We’re usually packed with Saudis and Bahrainis but not this year,” a staff member at a five-star hotel said.

Aviation analyst Will Horton estimated Hamad International Airport, one of the Middle East’s busiest, would handle 76% of the number of flights in early July compared with the same period last year, a loss of about 27,000 passengers a day.

The airport did not respond to a Reuters request for data on the impact of sanctions.

Visitors from the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council usually account for almost half of all visitors to Qatar. So a decision by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to cut diplomatic and transportation ties on June 5 hit traffic hard.

“Doha in early July, assuming the restrictions remain, will have less capacity than a year ago – a confronting figure for a region where every month sets year-onyear records,” said Horton, senior analyst at Australia’s CAPA Center for Aviation.

There is no breakthrough in sight for the crisis in which the four Arab nations issued an ultimatum to Doha to close Al Jazeera television, curb ties with Iran, shut a Turkish base and pay reparations. A defiant Doha has denied accusations of supporting terrorism and says the demands are unrealistic.

Hundreds of weekly flights to and from Qatar have already been canceled because of the dispute. Hamad Airport will lose fees paid by airlines and passengers, as well as terminal revenue from duty-free shops and restaurants.

Air links suspended by the four Arab states represented around 25% of flights by state-owned Qatar Airways, one of the region’s big three carriers.

Elsewhere in the tourist sector, hotels, restaurants and other facilities have had to find new sources of services and goods, in some cases, at higher cost, due to the boycott, said Rashid Aboobacker, senior director at TRI Consulting in Dubai.

“A substantial drop in visitor arrivals is likely to force hotel and real estate developers to re-evaluate their strategies and priorities, potentially causing delays to some of the ongoing projects,” he said.

Qatar’s World Cup organizing committee said sanctions had not affected preparations for the tournament and alternative sources for construction materials had been secured.

Qatar has said 46,000 rooms will be available to host fans by the time of the World Cup. In March, it had 119 hotels with 23,347 rooms, according to the tourism authority.

Developing business and leisure tourism is part of Qatar’s drive to develop its economy away from reliance on oil and gas revenue. Doha aims to raise the tourism sector’s contribution to GDP to 5.2%% by 2030 from around 4.1% now, while raising the number of people employed by nearly 70% to 127,900.