How Qatar was able to host the World Cup?

As a big football fan, the other day I was remembering the last World Cup in Qatar in November and it came to my mind, how can a country with less than 3 million citizens host more than 1 million people who came to watch football?

The choice of host

To explain it you have to go back to the beginning, when FIFA selected the Middle Eastern country to host the tournament. Everyone knows and it has been proven that the selection of Qatar was a fraud due to vote buying. But the organisers may not have thought about what the country had to do to host the World Cup.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter announces Qatar as the host nation for the FIFA World Cup 2022, in Zurich December 2, 2010.

Construction and accommodation of housing for fans

Qatar needed to build or remodel eight stadiums, training centres, roads, parks and even a new city, but the biggest challenge was to accommodate the 850,000 visitors, politicians, media and teams expected during the tournament. Many of the available rooms were secured by the organisers, leaving a shortage for fans.

The peak of demand would be on 27-28 November when organisers expected 276.000 ticket holders to seek accommodation. In spring 2022, Qatar had some 33,000-34,000 hotel rooms, and at the rate at which the country was building hotels, another 25,000 rooms were expected to be available by November. However, even with this optimistic estimate, the country still fell short of the target, so organisers used several strategies to increase the number of rooms available.

• Launched the “host a fan” campaign to encourage local people to host visiting fans.
• Offered camping in the desert outside Doha in a small tent city as a more affordable option.
• Recommended a satellite city called Madinatna, with two dozen hotels and a huge rental apartment complex that will house up to 27,000 fans.
• Made available two cruise ships that were in the port of Doha with a total of 3,898 cabins.

The Qataris also expected fans to stay in other Gulf cities, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE or Muscat in Oman, thus reducing their hotel demand. However, delay in planning meant that there was constant construction work to build tents or bungalows to house fans while the tournament was taking place, angry fans clamouring for accommodation that had not yet been built and constant chaos on the streets of Doha.

Despite this, Qatar was able to host the World Cup, drawing the largest number of spectators in the event’s history and achieving its real goal, sportwashing the country’s image.

My Inventory Control at Home

You may think I am crazy or I have too much free time, but… I actually track the goods I buy and the stock of essentials on an excel sheet. Continue reading to find out how I do it.

Consumption list. But why?….

First, I am lazy. Second, I am very pragmatic. Third, I don’t like spending time thinking about what to cook. So, I created a meal schedule. To stay healthy, I roughly counted the calories of each meal and made sure to cover at least 80% of all essential nutrition variables (vitamins, minerals, water, etc). If you are interested in trying the same, I recommend you an app called Cronometer. Here you can check my schedule:

Safety Stock Management 

Next, I counted the essential products needed for cooking these meals per week and forecasted the demand. I also defined a safety stock for some products.

For example, I decided to always have in stock at least 5 bottles of 8L of water or to have 1 kg of lentils. I use kanban signs to remind myself about maintaining the safety stock like this one:

Expenses Forecasting

Finally, I also track all my expenses in the same spreadsheet. I created a list of the goods that I buy and the frequency of ordering (they include food and drugstore products). Some prices may not be accurate because of the inflation, I should update them soon. It’s a 56 rows tables, I’ll just paste a demo screenshot:

As a conclusion, I found out that my monthly Mercadona purchase is around 150€, considering that I live alone and take care of all my house chores by myself. Of course, it used to be much cheaper when I lived with my parents…

In conclusion, this small inventory control exercise showed the benefits of keeping track of the stuff you buy, even though they are essential goods. Also, having a meal schedule is really useful. The downside is that you spend 5 hours of your life planning all the stuff, but it is worth it. 

P.S. I also spent 7 hours matching all the clothes and shoes in my wardrobe to combine into pre-made outfits, trying them on and taking pictures of each outfit (this way I can simply choose a convenient outfit from my gallery and forget about the never ending struggle of “what to wear today”). But let’s leave this story for another time. 🙂