Accor recruiting 12,000 temporary workers to help accommodate Qatar’s World Cup fans

DOHA: Hotel operator Accor is recruiting 12,000 temporary overseas employees to operate 65,000 empty rooms in apartments and homes in Qatar as temporary fan housing for the 2022 soccer World Cup, its chairman and CEO Sebastien Bazin told Reuters. Qatar is working to avoid an accommodation shortage during the tournament and has hired Accor, Europe’s largest hotel operator, to manage the temporary operation. “65,000 rooms is like opening 600 hotels, so we committed to hire enough people to serve it,” Bazin said, adding that a drive is under way in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and South America to recruit housekeepers, front-desk staff, logistics experts and others.

“All that is going to be dismantled at the end of December,” he said. Qatar’s official World Cup accommodation website has received around 25,000 bookings so far, and will offer more than 100,000 rooms, Omar Al Jaber, executive director of accommodation for tournament organizers the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy told reporters on Tuesday. “We will be under pressure until the first match has started.

This is normal and we are ready,” Al Jaber said. Qatar hopes to attract 1.2 million visitors, nearly half of its population, during the 28-day tournament in November and December. But the tiny Gulf Arab state has fewer than 30,000 hotel rooms, according estimates by Qatar Tourism, and 80 percent of those rooms have been block booked by world soccer’s governing body FIFA, for official guests, World Cup organizers said.