Hamad Doha Airport

The airport is big, new, shiny and above all else poorly planned and laid out. There are not enough rest rooms close to the gate. The rest rooms which are close to the gate are small and inadequate. The 'sleeping' or 'rest' area is small and uncomfortable. The food and beverage choices are very limited for budget travelers. All the food outlets are expensive and fancy. The cleanliness of the rest rooms is appalling. Worst of all? The security checks. 3-4 Airbus A380's carrying over 1000 people will touch down within minutes of one another and the airport in all it's wisdom decides to have 2 security lanes open. Approximate wait time? An eternity or till hell freezes over, whichever comes first! After you have endured Doha airport security, made your way to a disgustingly feral lavatory, paid $7 for a coffee, you then have the pleasure of another security check! This airport is a joke. Qatar airways - please find the people who worked on Changi Airport and pay them billions to re-work the disaster that is your brand new airport.

Doha airport is big and brash, with more high-end shops than I've ever seen at an airport anywhere. We did wonder how they manage to sell enough stuff, but presumably they do. For the average person with the average budget, the options are fairly limited. There is a food hall, open 24/7, with the usual fast food offerings. Not cheap, on a par with airports in the UK. There is free wi-fi, and it works, which is a real blessing. Very little in the way of seating until you get to the gates. I guess people sitting around are not shopping. Toilets were not as bad as some reviewers have suggested, but not great either. I get the feeling that one day the airport itself will be the destination, with people being encouraged to come here and have a day's "shopping experience". Certainly, on the two Qatar Airways planes which we landed here on, almost everyone was in transit. Only a small handful of people trundled off to actually enter Qatar. Our planes all ran to schedule. There is plenty of space at the gates, and plenty of space in the whole airport. Unless you're absolutely loaded and enjoy buying high-end designer goods, I wouldn't recommend having to be here too long in transit. Couple of hours is OK, but if you've scheduled a 9-hour transit to save £20, it'll cost you more than that in food and coffee, and you will end up bored. Clearly, everything is being readied for the World Cup 2022. For an airport so geared to transit passengers, how will they cope with a few weeks of packed flights full of football fans trying to enter the country? I suspect a lot of fans will stay in Dubai or Bahrain and just fly in for the matches, so there could be a lot of coming and going throughout that time. From the air, Doha looks like it could be blown away by a sandstorm, it looks so fleeting and transitory. The airport has clearly had a huge amount of cash thrown into it.

Very grey and dull lighting at Doha Airport. Feels like 2am no matter what time you visit. Good designer shops (at full retail prices) and expensive food if that's your thing. Takes ages to get anywhere, if you get unlucky the transit security takes an age, if you are trying to leave to enter Qatar and are not business or first class it is an absolute nightmare, allow at least 90 mins of being treated like cattle.

✅ Verified Review | Airport is functional, but not so sure what all the hype is about. Travelling with a 9 month old we were assured that there would be a pushchair waiting at the gate upon arrival for us. However it was not to be. Airport staff at the gate sent us to 'customer service' who just shouted 'no no no, go back to your gate'. Gave up on ever getting one, and joined a number of frustrated travellers with children who had been promised a pushchair but couldn't find one. Terminal is much less crowded than the previous one, but didn't get to see any of it as ground staff informed us that our gate was a 25 minute walk away, and we must rush (obviously without pushchair). Guess the ground staff walk slowly as we made it in 3 minutes.

✅ Verified Review | Had a 3 hour wait there for a transit flight. Initial impressions are good. The transit security took a while about 20 minutes which in a hurry might be an issue . However on my return trip we didnt even go through security. All in all a very nice airport, new, luxurious and spacious. Nice Duty free and nice restaurants. Wifi was good though a couple of times it stopped working.

Very easy to navigate, clean and efficient airport. Have had many transits and arrivals here. When connecting to Dubai fast track is great or often your are just disembarked into transit area anyway. First class, business and silver lounges are all top quality, restaurant service in first and business is excellent. Shopping area is nice and always more than enough staff hanging around to help. Only faults I have is the departure screens design is not pleasing on the eye but they generally Have a guy standing nearby who looks it up for you and short hop flights are always very far away gates that have a bus transfer anyway. With such a new airport one would imagine it possible to air bridge all flights. Looking forward to going back.

✅ Verified Review | One simple word to describe this airport: unsatisfactory. I came in with the same expectations as Changi Airport, perhaps even higher since it's new. The Al Maha lounge is like a pub. Full of drunk people and no seats. Shopping is overpriced, 9 riyals for a 500ml Evian! When I thought Suvarnabhumi airport was overpriced charging 6 for a 600ml bottle. There's no fast food in sight, no Starbucks in sight, only some overpriced fancy seafood bar, which is not what I want for breakfast. I was lucky that there was good food on the plane. However, there is a zone for families with comfortable seats and privacy. The structure is also strange. Normally airport and airplane designers try to make the terminal airy. Too bad it'a airy only in The Central concourse, the rest of the terminal is like walking in an old hospital, a pretty large hospital though. The good thing is, the airport will never be overcrowded, especially at the baggage claim.

✅ Verified Review | Hamad Doha has got it's act back together. It's clean, high class and efficient. All elements of a great airport are back in place. The problems of poor service, things not working are once again a thing of the past (December). Check in was fast, security even faster.

✅ Verified Review | At Doha airport, there were no gate agents directing passengers, especially ones with tight connecting flights. Being the fabulous international hub that it is, I had to spend precious seconds staring at a departure monitor, waiting for the dozens of flight information in Arabic and English to scroll through, before seeing my gate appear on screen. At the security check point there was poor management as well. One long line and a choke point before passenger could reach the multiple scanners and security stations. I noticed too late that there was a priority check station but no signs or staff to guide people through it. At the scanners, again no visible sign as to what needed to be removed and placed into the bins. Mumbling staff and confused international passengers caused more minutes to be wasted. At this point, in my rush to get through I put my passport and boarding card in the bin. When the bin reappeared from the scanner the boarding card was missing (thankfully it wasn't my passport). The security people were stressed and barely helpful so rather that stay and argue I rushed to the nearest airline counter and was re-issued another boarding card. The counter agent told me to run and was kind enough to have a colleague accompany me through the terminal pointing out the way to the gate. To make a long story short, a Qatar Airways agent with a radio noticed me, announced that I was on my way and finally I was on the aircraft, literally the last passenger on board with the pilot asking all ground personnel leave immediately. Basically, the same on the return flight. Surprisingly for a great big airport like Hamad the plane had to park away from a gate and buses had to used to ferry us to the terminal. Of course the bus had to stop for several minutes to avoid getting blasted by jet exhaust. Better situation in the terminal with more staff along the way answering question and me being smarter due to my in-bound experience. There were two security checks. Again, due to lack of proper signs, inarticulate staff and tired and confused international passenger, more delay getting through. Please tell me why there were no signs and why the staff failed to inform people clearly as to what needed to be removed from ones person before walking through the metal detector? The result was multiple people having to walk through the metal detectors multiple times and putting individual items in widely separated scanner bins. Thus I am now the proud owner of a belt belonging to a much wider person and I am sure, there is another human somewhere in the world, with a belt much smaller than his girth. I have to say that my experience with Hamad was unsatisfactory. I understand that in the annals of airport horror stories mine is a cakewalk but it was partly a result of inferior customer service. Something I expect in the USA but not at a much vaunted Middle East airport. Avoid flying via Hamad, sorry Changi I promise not to stray again.

✅ Verified Review | Everything ran smoothly. Instantly through transit security, instantly through gate security. No issues in purchasing/picking up duty free purchase. Witnessing airport staff assisting other passengers. Good signage to direct people throughout the terminal (whether to security. Or duty free or food court) the only issue I had was some power sockets to recharge my iPad weren't working. But who knows, that may have been a technical fault on my adapter and not the fault of the airport.