Can Qatar match Emirates with stopovers?

The beautiful departing facility at Dubai airport

Today my focus will not be on international conferences as such, but instead on getting there and back. And more specifically on the wonderful opportunity to add a short stopover on to your journey. A few days ago I was stunned to read something like this on an economic forum post: One advantage that CEOs and celebrities have is that they do not need to spend time on uninteresting and time consuming issues such as making travel plans. Really? Searching for interesting stopovers, different airfares linked to different transits, and planning a day or two that can be added onto the trip just to unwind and recharge, is one of the major joys of travelling. Well, at least that is how I see it. I spend hours and hours on planning and also start months in advance – and because I do it in ‘my personal time’ I see this activity as my hobby.

   

This week Qatar announced that, like Emirates (which is based in Dubai), they would provide 96 hour visas to passengers using their airline and airport hub (Doha) to get to their final destination.  This is great news to me because although I only managed to fly Qatar once before, I was seriously impressed then with their standard of service and personal attention and would also like to see more of Doha than just the airport. We were treated like royalty on board the aircraft and because we only had three hours to connect with our next flight, were escorted by an official from the aircraft right through to the door of the next aircraft – support service that I liked a lot – and no, we flew ordinary economic class and we are not VIPs.  

We are members of the Emirates loyalty program and we really enjoy the stopovers that we usually take on our way back to South Africa. The arrangements for airport transfers, hotel accommodation that includes breakfast and the visa issues are all taken care of by the Emirates office in Johannesburg and done electronically. We just select when and where we want to go and they arrange it. And on arrival at the airport in Dubai, there is always a person waiting for us with my name on a board before we come to customs to provide me with an info pack and to direct me to the Arabian Adventures booth where the transport is arranged to get us to the hotel of our choice.

The first time I was informed about the stopover program was when I booked a flight and we had a transit time of more than 8 hours in Dubai. Someone from Emirates phoned and said that Emirates would like to put us up in a hotel so we do not need to stay at the airport. Wow. We enjoyed this so much and after that, arranged for our own stopover, each time that we fly Emirates. On a recent trip, we had a stopover of 5-6 hours early morning and were given vouchers for breakfast that we could use at one of several restaurants. Again, we were pleasantly surprised by the gesture and had a lovely breakfast without our South African wallets suffering due to our indulgence.

So I cannot wait to try the Qatar stopover to compare it to that of Emirates…hopefully soon.