Talk of holiday destinations in the Middle East - in the bits not at war, obviously - and inevitably it’s all talk of Dubai Dubai Dubai. For anyone with dazzling teeth veneers, fake tan and stick-on lashes, Dubai has become the go-to winter holiday destination - a bit tacky, maybe, something like a Blackpool with sand dunes, but in no small part down to the United Arab Emirate’s bold vision in making a major push into tourism as its oil revenues start to dry out.
But maybe Dubai’s time is over: look, rather, to its neighbour Qatar - admittedly harder to pronounce (it’s Catta, not Catarrh), and, as an authoritarian state, undoubtedly not meeting western democratic standards of human rights and political participation. But nonetheless for many visitors it’s a calmer, less glitzy place that has so far managed to retain its own sense of culture: there are few places where the likes of the Museum of Islamic Art - situated in a modernist spin on mosque aesthetics by the ‘starchitect’ I.M. Pei - can sit next to a Covent Garden-like leisure district - complete with outdoor air-con (yes, that’s a real thing) - and a corner shop selling falcons.
Parks, castles, traditional markets, a growing roster of international sports events, including Formula One - there’s a diversity of experience here that the more upscale party town atmosphere of Dubai struggles to match. Even Qataris make jokes about Dubai’s flashy obsession with making everything the biggest, fastest, shiniest. And least authentic, they might add. Not that there are many Qataris in Qatar: the native-born are a distinct minority here at the moment, making for an expat pot pourri of a population that brings its own diverse enthusiasms.
No wonder then that visitor numbers to Qatar are on the up - by one estimate, Qatar has the fastest growing tourist sector in the Middle East - boosted by 2022’s hosting of the World Cup, with six million tourists a year expected to begin visiting the country by 2030. The investment in infrastructure that the tournament brought - not least that Hamad International Airport became ranked as one of the best in the world, with Qatar Airways connecting the capital Doha with 170 cities - and a rapid bout of top-flight hotel building, has all fed the demand. In the pipeline? An ‘entertainment island’ of floating hotels, and a 36-slide water park; an inland sea nature reserve; a kite beach resort; and, of all the things you need in 20-degree year-round heat, Doha Winter Wonderland.
Throw in the fact that all of the emirates have modernised at a miraculous pace that has turned desert into high-tech urban landscape in the space of a couple of generations - making state-of-the-art facilities the norm rather than the exception - an extensive metro system and the beaches of the Arabian gulf never far away, and Qatar makes for an enticing package. That authoritarianism? Well, at least it makes Doha one of the few extremely safe cities in the world too.