Learning a thing or two from Qatar

Twenty years ago, I arrived at an airport in the middle of a desert peninsula in the Persian Gulf. The arrival hall was basic, not one to remember, and the duty free consisted of one room with items piled up on the floor. The passport control officers were unfriendly and the customs agents scrutinized every item of luggage. As I remember, there were only one or two decent hotels and little traffic on the road. Qatar was engaged in a wasteful, low-intensity war with Bahrain over a few patches of sand in the sea. My first thought was why the Qataris can’t learn a thing or two from Dubai, which was in the birth pangs of a historic economic revolution. Ten years later, I arrived in Qatar again, this time invited by the ministry of tourism to attend the country’s first ever tourism festival. I was met at the airport