United Arab Emirates & Qatar - $244.03
Let’s begin with a well-known fact, the UAE and Qatar are very expensive places where it's tough to keep costs down. This was definitely the case for us, as we went seriously over budget (again…) here, but thankfully we were only staying for five short days. Our biggest expenses here were Food & Groceries, Lodging, and Transportation. Our only $0 expense here was Flights, since we arrived using AAdvantage miles from Johannesburg, and traveled between the two using British Airways Avios.
We spent almost $100 per day on Food and Groceries, far more than we have spent anywhere else in the world. However, while the food in the Emirates was incredibly expensive almost everywhere we went, we didn’t have one thing in three days that we wouldn’t have again. The restaurants there seem to only make really excellent food, and even though we weren’t exactly happy to pay their exorbitant prices, the quality of the food did justify many of the high prices. While in Qatar our largest expense was also for Food but most was purchased within our hotel, the Waldorf-Astoria Doha West Bay.
The Waldorf-Astoria made up the Qatar portion of our second largest spending category, Lodging. Hotel rooms there normally start at over $250 per night, but we used our annual $200 Fine Hotels & Resorts perk from our American Express Platinum card, to substantially lower the cost. This perk also meant we got early check-in, late check-out, a room upgrade, and $100 off food and beverages purchased on the property. All together, this meant that we saved over $300 on our hotel stay here, all while vastly improving our experience and lowering our costs in Qatar.
While in the UAE our lodging cost was also slightly higher than it needed to be, as we met one of our closest friends from Switzerland in Dubai and decided to share an AirBnB rather than getting 2 cheaper hotel rooms. Our AirBnB was close to the Burj Khalifa and while not being the most expensive option on the market (not even close) it was new, modern, and slightly nicer than many other options. We also booked it quite late, meaning that many of the better priced flats were already reserved.
We spent about $30 per day on Other Transportation which consisted of many Uber, Careem, and taxi trips. While many of our different destinations seemed to be walking distance when looking at them on the map, and there is public transportation in both Dubai and Qatar, the heat and inconvenient station locations relegated us to frequently using vehicles to cover relatively short distances.
While in the Emirates we decided to spend one day driving to Abu Dhabi, so we had a relatively small Rental Car & Gas expense of $80, including several road tolls. While in Abu Dhabi we visited the Louvre extension, covering our Activities expense of $34. While visiting Qatar we spent just over $40 on Visas to enter on US passports. Effective October 1, 2024, US citizens need to pay $21 for a visa on arrival when visiting, but are granted a stay of up to 90 pre-approved visa-free. Unfortunately, even though we were only staying two days, we still had to pay for the full 90 day visa. Finally, we had several Miscellaneous costs including laundry powder, cash, and eSims that added up to about $8 per day over three and a half days.