If you need to do a 9 hour layover in Doha, this is your guide to what to do to make the most of your time there. Also, how to leave the airport on a Qatar stopover!
There must be a way to make the most of our Qatar stop over while we were there, I thought. Turns out, there is! Other Qatar Airways passengers can get a hotel voucher when they have a stopover as long as ours, but apparently our super cheap flight meant there was no budget for this.
I tried to pull some strings at work I worked at Flight Centre , but was firmly told it was up to me to sort my own hotel to stay the night in Qatar. It was right in the centre and close to the seaside Corniche Boulevard. I decided to just go for it and get it sorted on booking. Please be advised that couples checking in to the same room must present a marriage certificate upon check-in as per Qatari law. There was no getting around that one, me and my boyfriend would need two rooms.
Cancel that then, and I booked two singles knowing that there was a free cancellation option upto 48 hours before check in. I might be a travel blogger, but at that time I was inexperienced in layovers and changing planes. We only had 9 hours in Qatar and we wasted over an hour because we had no idea what we were doing, and just kept going wrong.
The announcement on the airport bus told us that if we have yellow tickets we must go to Departures. This may sound obvious to some, even me now, but we followed that instruction and carried on to Departures, rather than Arrivals.
