Old faces longing a return to Dubai

Visits to Doha from Dubai are a far more sociable affair than they used to be. In the past a trip to Qatar normally meant lonely nights in a hotel room catching up with emails and work.

Today it is very different. With so many consultants, contractors and suppliers that were working in Dubai now plying their trade on projects in and around Doha, there are plenty of old friends and business acquaintances to catch up with.

Most are doing well working on major projects such as New Doha International Airport and other major infrastructure schemes. But as always in construction, a project doesn’t last forever and the projects that people have been working on since the Dubai construction crash in 2009 are now two years old and many are approaching completion.

This leaves the inevitable question of what next. The obvious choice is to look for work on other projects in Doha, and with so much planned ahead of football’s Fifa World Cup in 2022 that appears to be the most likely source of employment in the coming years.

Other options in the region are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi. But the most popular destination is a return to Dubai. “I’d love to go back and work in Dubai, it’s a great place to live,” says a contractor. “Dubai is better because they have the best infrastructure, schools, housing, malls, nightlife, you name it, it’s already there. And for people like me, that means there’s not that much work to be done anymore.”