Doha hotels incur losses on Eid holidays as sanctions bite

doha — A boycott imposed by four Arab nations that accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism is squeezing the tourism sector and Doha’s hotels which would normally be full in the Eid Al Fitr holiday have seen steep falls in their occupancy rates.

A Reuters survey of five major hotels found average occupancy was around 57 per cent 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.

But Qatar’s official news agency QNA cited officials and managers in the hotel sector reporting hotel occupancy over the holiday period stood at more than 95 per cent and denied reports of lower rates.

“They pointed to high tourist flows from the Sultanate of Oman and the State of Kuwait and a significant increase in demand from domestic tourism,” QNA said.

QNA said an offer by some hotels to offer guests staying two nights at hotels a third night free had helped win high occupancy and that the sector has shown its ability to “diversify away from traditional markets”.

Aviation analyst Will Horton estimated Hamad International Airport, one of the Middle East’s busiest, would handle 76 per cent as many flights in early July compared with the same period last year, a loss of about 27,000 passengers a day. The airport said in a statement on Tuesday it had experienced a “very busy” Eid period with 580,000 passengers passing through between June 19 and June 25. It did not give comparative figures for last year’s Eid.

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 transport ties on June 5 hit traffic hard.

Hundreds of weekly flights to and from Qatar have already been cancelled so far. Hamad airport stands to 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 per cent of flights by state-owned Qatar Airways, one of the region’s big three carriers. Qatar Airways, whose hub is Hamad airport, said on Tuesday that 510,949 of its passengers had travelled through the airport in the past seven days. It did not give comparative figures. Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker had said on June 14 the majority of its operations had not been affected by restrictions imposed by the four Arab states.

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. — Reuters