OK, I'll admit I've never stayed in a luxury tent, and maybe it would be cool even for a few days. Looking at the tent in your picture, how much do you think it will cost? If they're that nice (with plumbing, etc.) and the experience that fun, I could see a $2000/night price tag. I'll even give you that on second thought, this is sort of cool and probably is the type of thing they need to promote more of for non-football activities for the visitors. It's not my thing (I haven't slept in a tent since grade school), but others would probably enjoy something like this. And agreed, the bait-and-switch with promising hotel rooms in their bid and then offering tents and cruise ship cabins is a different issue which most of us would agree is a bad deal. So I'll even say this, had the World Cup been shared among several countries in the region, including as you say the more liberal ones which allow alcohol, I wouldn't be so down on it. I've been to Bahrain half a dozen times and I didn't mind it, although it would never be on my list to go to for a holiday. They even could have thrown in some non-liberal countries to give the visitor some choices as options for interesting things to see and experience in the region. But the reality is all we have is Qatar, and for the most part one boring city, so even with these tents, for me it still has very little to offer outside the matches.
Depends on who they attack though. USA players or tourists. Israel if they qualify. There's so many factors and variables I am not going to even go into as well.
ISIS already slaughters Muslims at an appalling rate. Don't think that aspect can get worse. There's a school of thought that the petrostates don't really mind groups like ISIS because if those people are out causing trouble in Syria and Iraq and Paris and Brussels, they aren't causing trouble in Saudi Arabia and Dubai and Qatar. So the petrostates don't really work very hard against ISIS. A strike in Qatar in 2022 would obviously change THAT equation.
If Israel qualifies, we'll know that God's sense of humor and irony transcend all human understanding.
Yes but this is a special event within the Muslim world, a showcase that the event organizers don't want marred with violence of this kind. (Unless they're really sick individuals and in on it, of course.) It's one thing to passively tolerate when other nations are enduring a sort of civil war but another thing entirely when that conflict is brought to your doorstep purely to interrupt your coming out party. Just because you may support your buddy getting a divorce doesn't mean you want him to act like a dick at your wedding.
Which is what we could be dealing with unfortunately. What is that Dark Knight quote about some people who just want to watch the world burn...
It seems that Qatar fc have signed another foreigner. Rodrigo Tabata has joined the squad for their wcq today agaisnt Hong Kong. I counted 6 of 11 foreign starters for Qatar. I wonder how many they will have by 2022.
Without drifting too far let me state that... 1. The majority of Muslims already hates ISIS. 2. ISIS doesn't care what anyone thinks, Muslim or not. But I don't want to talk ISIS motives in here. Let's keep the security discussion to general threat and prevention.
That's a nice theory. It would give the option of maybe seeing a couple of games over two days, flying in before one, and out after the other. If doing that three times would be feasible, it could make things ok, so you could see six games over a couple of weeks, in three batches. I'd imagine those flights would be horribly expensive though, due to demand if a lot of people had the same idea.
@RichardL this is a good suggestion. Depending mostly on cost, and obviously flight availability and convenience, if I do choose to spend a few days in the region to watch a couple of games in person, this is something I'd consider. I'd much rather be in Dubai, especially if the alcohol policy is restrictive in Qatar. I'd also consider flying in and out of Qatar on the same game day to just catch the match. Your strategy of overnighting in Doha to attend games on successive days has the issue of a lot of wasted time though. For convenience, it would be great to set Dubai as home base and stay checked into a hotel for the duration. Then fly into Doha (and maybe even stay in a tent or cruise ship!) with a small overnight bag and change of underwear to catch the two games, then go back to Dubai. But you'd be paying for a night in Dubai (I'm sure not cheap) for a room not being used and would need to allow time to travel around and check-in and check out of the Doha hotel. You could check out in Dubai and store the main suitcase in the hotel (all decent hotels allow this especially if you're coming right back), then check back in the next day. But that's a lot of time wasted commuting to/from airports, taking flights, repacking and unpacking suitcases and checking in and in and out of hotels; time much better spent watching matches in bars or having fun in other activities. Lots of moving around like this between hotels can be exhausting and stressful, but with the hotel prices most of us would need to do that. Good suggestion though and my guess is there will be some people doing this, especially if the alcohol policy in Qatar isn't liberalized for the tournament. It's something to consider with some personalized customization.
Perhaps the answer is that any bidding host must have a certain percentage of infrastructure completed at the time of the bid. Say 60-70%. That will hopefully prevent situations like Brazil working on their stadiums until literately the last minute. I expect five star hotels to cost 1500-2000 QAR a night in 2022 during the tournament. A luxury tent like the above with en suite bathroom would probably be in the region of QAR 1000-1200, so in the neighborhood of USD 300. @glennaldo_sf feel free to chime in on Qatar prices. Given the current state of the Israeli team that appears to be a highly unlikely scenario. In any case, politics will always prevent equal access opportunity for all participants. Say 2022 would have been awarded to the USA and Iran would qualify (a much more realistic scenario in my opinion). How easy would it be for someone in Tehran to get a US visa without family connections in California?
Well, if I am Emirates (or Etihad to include Abu Dhabi) I would try to offer as many flights as possible to Doha on a daily basis during the tournament. In fact, I just checked. At present we have about 36 daily flights to Doha from Dubai. At the very least that number should stay the same. Keep in mind that Dubai has its own major event coming up. The 2020 World Expo. Dubai plans on having more than 100,000 hotel rooms by then, nearly double the amount that Qatar promised for the World Cup. I would expect room rates to be lower than Doha so adding in the flight(s) to the games may not really hurt the bottom line. People can also stay and fly in from Abu Dhabi, Manama and Muscat. All of these cities serve alcohol and are no longer than 90 minutes away by plane. And that really would have been the ideal regional world cup: Dubai (UAE) Abu Dhabi (UAE) Doha (Qatar) Manama (Bahrain) Muscat (Oman) But it still can be from a tourism perspective.
Going by the example of trying to do six games though, you'd either have to fly in and out of six separate days without the stopover, or have to go to two games in a single day, three times. Unless the stadiums are incredibly close, it'd be difficult to see two games in consecutive time slots, as there's usually only about an hour between games. Add in going to/from airports twice in a day, and it could make the day a bit of a rush. As for having three (separate) nights in Doha, you wouldn't pay for hotel rooms on the nights you'd be in Doha. You'd make the Dubai booking separate bookings. You could even save by bookending your trip with nights in Doha, e.g. ... Day 1: fly in to Doha, see 1st match, night in Doha Day 2: see 2nd match, fly to Dubai, night in Dubai Day 3-6 in Dubai. Day 7: fly to Doha, see 3rd match, night in Doha. Day 8: see 4th match, fly to Dubai, night in Dubai. Day: 9-12 Day 13: fly to Doha, see 5th match, night in Doha. Day 14: see 6th match, fly home. You'd treat day 2-6 and 8-12 as two separate hotel bookings. Of course, that would rely on favourable flight times in an out of Doha. Unpacking shouldn't be an issue. To be honest, unless you are staying in the same hotel for a couple of weeks, I don't see the point in unpacking a suitcase anyway.
None of those places have a lack of hotel rooms. Certainly, not to the point where the host locations would need to put up shantytowns for visiting fans.
To be honest, I don't think Brazil should've been given the WC or the Olympics. As a general rule, I think those events should be only awarded to highly economically developed industrialized nations with high levels of democracy and human rights. But, it's pretty clear that neither the IOC nor FIFA care about any of that.
Screw that, Brazil was great. It is a world game. I just wish FIFA would demand such high grade expensive stadiums.
Part of my issue with giving the WC to places like Brazil and South Africa is that the billions spent on the stadiums and other goodies needed for the events could be much better spent on more basic infrastructure that would benefit the average person in those countries to a much greater extent. It's ultimately the choice of the people in those countries, of course. But, one of the comments I heard from a friend of mine who went to Brazil is that it made him uncomfortable to see slums on the way to the shiny new soccer stadium. It's like demanding your friend serve you caviar and lobster when you come to visit him, even if that means his kids are going to have to skip breakfast the next day because he can't afford to buy both. I guess my complaint is that events like the WC and Olympics just keep getting more and more extravagant. And the extravagance has little to do with the players or the fans. It's more about making people like Sepp Blatter and his various hangers-on and lickspittles feel like they're something other than a fat waste of flesh and oxygen.
as decided by who? Who sets the standards? If Brazil is disqualified them how many countries meet your qualifications? I'm guessing your list is something like 3 in Asia, 2 in North America, most of Western Europe and zero in Africa or Latin America. It would be a World Cup of exclusion. One thing I know is that I'm glad they didn't follow your rule in 2014 because the Brazil World Cup was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
Many folks agree that the largesse that's now considered the norm for winning Olympic and WC bids is indeed harmful and shameful, but there are ways to address this without being so limiting on qualified bidders, either. For its part FIFA should have more clearly mandated standards about existing venues, hotel capacity and infrastructure, oriented around affordability and cost effectiveness for the bidders. In essence, prohibit bids that rely on such an extensive amount of new construction because that increases the chances for cost overruns, corruption and/or failing to meet obligations. There should also be lower minimum capacities for stadiums (to enable smaller countries to at least bid) and increased financial support provided to the winning nation. For the bidding nations we can't stop everyone from acting stupidly, so we need more local politicians and the general population to recognize how much of these bid proposals are extravagance versus necessity. The public pressure during the recent Winter Olympics bid process was a great example of this, and if it happens more often then the IOC and FIFA will do better in not demanding or expecting as much. Perhaps in their scoring of each bid there can be a bonus for how the proposal ranks as a potentially profitable exercise for the host community? Granted, these measures also fly in the face of the opportunism that permeates the culture at these organizations and their local collaborators. But if something like this were established as policy then a Brazil or South Africa could still host, only with lowered demands and greater oversight to ensure that what's done is proper and efficient.