Glastonbury-like tent villages for Qatar 2022
Gulf state consults music festivals and lays on cruise ships to tackle hotel crisis ahead of 2022 World Cup
Qatar 2022 World Cup organisers have consulted with the teams behind the Glastonbury and Coachella music festivals’ tent villages as they try to find enough accommodation to house an estimated 1.2million football fans. Canvas villages in the desert would cater for up to 15,000 visitors while the tiny Gulf state, which will only have 70,000 hotel rooms when the tournament kicks off, has also chartered two luxury cruise liners to be berthed in Doha Port.
THE Qatari World Cup in 2022 promises to differ from previous tournaments in myriad ways.
Not least, organisers are being forced to get creative when it comes to finding accommodation for the estimated 1.2million football fans expected to descend on the tiny Gulf state.
A dearth of hotel rooms is said to have prompted committee members to consult the organisers of the Glastonbury and Coachella festivals about pitching a sea of tents in the desert.
The canvas fan villages would host between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors, easing the considerable pressures that the state is facing when it comes to finding accommodation.
It emerged at a pre-tournament update for western journalists provided by the Qatari team organising the World Cup. For fans camping at the tournament, which will take place from November to December 2022, temperatures are expected to range between 17-30C.
At the briefing, Hassan Al Thawadi, secretary-general of the supreme committee for delivery and legacy, asked couples of all sexual orientations attending the event to refrain from engaging in public displays of affection.
“We are a progressively conservative culture, adhering to a set of beliefs which are not exclusive to the region,” he said. “Public displays of affection between any couples are not part of our culture. We ask visitors to appreciate our culture. Respect it.”
There are only 37,000 hotel rooms in Qatar, which is roughly the same size as Yorkshire and has a population of around 2.8million. Construction work will take that number to 70,000 rooms by the end of 2021, but that will still leave a huge shortage of accommodation for supporters from the 32 competing nations. The state had no footballing history or infrastructure when it won its bid to host the competition in 2010. But it has already come up with a number of unconventional solutions for temporary visitors.
Qatar has chartered two luxury cruise liners with a combined capacity of 5,000 cabins, each providing accommodation for two to five people. Thousands of football fans are expected to base themselves on the MSC Cruises ships for the month-long tournament.
The specific details concerning the provision of tents are not yet known, and solutions for dealing with the extremes of temperature in the desert have yet to be revealed.
Representatives from Glastonbury and the Coachella festival in California did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Coachella takes place on consecutive three-day weekends in April in the Colorado Desert in California, hosting some 250,000 revellers. Some 200,000 attend the five-day Glastonbury festival in Somerset in June. Both provide sprawling camps for ticket holders and the World Cup organisers are understood to have held talks with representatives from each event in the hope of tapping into their facilities, security and land expertise. However, in a significant departure from festival etiquette, the issue of alcohol will not be straightforward. Tournament organisers have said alcohol will be available for fans in designated areas, but not in public spaces, out of respect for the country’s Muslim traditions. It is legal for non-qataris to buy alcohol in the country with a permit, and also to drink in licensed bars, clubs and hotels, although drinking in public is banned.
Fans of all nationalities will be thrown together and the Qataris plan to put on concerts and events to generate a celebratory atmosphere.
Workers’ and civil rights in Qatar have come under scrutiny since it won the bid to host the World Cup. Hundreds of immigrant workers are believed to have died working on infrastructure projects and concerns have also been raised about Qatar’s attitude to homosexuality, which is banned.
Meanwhile, leaked files alleged earlier this year that Qatar secretly offered $400million to Fifa just 21 days before it was awarded the World Cup. The documents, seen by The Sunday Times, reportedly revealed that executives from Al Jazeera, the Qatari state-run broadcaster owned and controlled by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, signed a television contract making the huge offer.
The contract is said to have included an unprecedented success fee of $100million (£77million) to be paid to Fifa only if Qatar’s bid was successful.
The newspaper alleged that another offer of $480 million was made by Qatar three years later, meaning Fifa was directly offered almost $1 billion by Qatar. According to the newspaper, this contract is now part of a bribery inquiry by Swiss police. Fifa refused to comment to The Sunday Times on the allegations.