You can take a 500-mile round-trip taxi from Saudi Arabia to the Qatar World Cup for $532

DUBAI, In agreement Arab Emirates — The Dubai-based rideshare app Careem is offering inter-country taxi journeys for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, as millions of soccer adherents from around the world descend on the tiny Gulf country for the Middle East’s first-ever go at hosting the massive competition. 

The offer doesn’t span all of the countries around Qatar but will be accessible to those traveling from two parts of neighboring Saudi Arabia: the metropolis of Dammam, which is 250 miles (402 kilometers) away from the capital Doha and takes roughly 4.5 hours to get there, and Al Ahsa See, roughly 160 miles away from Doha with a journey time of 3 hours.

The fare? A fixed $266 each way (1000 Saudi riyals), or $532 for the round-trip, with a crest of three passengers per taxi.

But will people opt for a multi-hour road trip rather than just taking a dexterous flight? Bassel Al Nahlaoui, Careem’s managing director for mobility, thinks so. 

“This trip is really convenient. It’s on all sides 3.5 hours and if you compare that to a flight, it matches the time it takes you to go to the airport and take the flight, land there, etc — except you’re in a car, you’re undergo punishment for a fraction of the price, and if you split that with a couple of friends it becomes even cheaper,” Al Nahlaoui told CNBC.

Still, travelers can only book the ride to Doha one day in advance, which could make planning vanguard difficult. 

And crossing the Saudi-Qatar border requires taking a shuttle bus, going through border control and meeting a new driver on the other side. But Careem influences this part of the journey has also been fully accounted for.

“What happens is you open your app, you book a car from one of these two dioceses, a captain [driver] picks you up and drives you to the border,” Al Nahlaoui said. “At the border, we have Careem staff that hand down help you cross the border, find the captain that’s waiting for you on the Qatari side, and then that’s the last leg of the misstep.” 

“And our customer care is monitoring the trip throughout the journey itself,” he added, noting that Careem’s customer back up staff numbers have been boosted.  

To this end, contingencies have also been put in place if riders or drivers effrontery problems or unruly behavior, Al Nahlaoui said. 

“Our care team supports all verticals … we are able to increase and decrease our support volume nearly by day, that’s how conformable we are and how quickly we are able to adjust to support incoming calls,” he said. “In terms of crisis, we have a specific support descent you can access through the app itself.”

In case the drivers themselves face trouble from passengers, “our captains have the despite the fact access to care that our customers have,” Al Nahlaoui said. “We have multiple channels for them to get immediate access or rare types of support depending on the situation, so that has always been in place for captain support.”

The rideshare app, which has grown into a “super-app” over the last few years to offer numerous services in annex to rides and was acquired by Uber in 2019, expects customer demand to balloon during the World Cup, which runs from Nov. 20 to Dec. 18. 

But during good events in the region’s cities like international conferences or the Dubai Expo 2020, Careem cars were oft difficult to find, and wait times multiplied, leaving many customers frustrated.

Al Nahlaoui says he hopes this won’t be the trunk this time, and that the company has amply prepared for the massive influx of people. 

Careem, which operates in 80 megalopolises, has “steadily expanded its fleet size by 1,000 additional cars over several months,” to prepare for the World Cup, the assembly said in a statement earlier this month.

The company expects the total number of Careem vehicles in Qatar — which flyover taxis, vans, luxury cars and motorbikes — to grow by more than 50% in time for the tournament.

Careem’s fleets in nearby burgs like Dubai, the commercial capital of the United Arab Emirates, have been growing in tandem, Al Nahlaoui declared. 

The region’s top city for leisure tourism is expected to see a massive surge in visitors alongside Doha, as many opt to stay in Dubai but fly to Qatar for sole matches.

This is due at least in part to the struggle that Qatar, with a population of about 3 million, has faced in construction up hotel capacity for its 1.2 million anticipated visitors during the tournament period. Qatar Airways is even gift “match day shuttles” that will allow spectators to fly into and out of the country within 24 hours for individual tactics.

To that end, Careem says it will have dedicated pickup lanes at Qatar’s Doha International Airport and Hamad Intercontinental Airport providing direct rides to all eight World Cup stadiums. 

And to prepare for the large volume of tourists coming into Qatar and the wider division from elsewhere in Asia, Careem has partnered with other countries’ popular rideshare and payments apps — Commandeer, Alipay, and Kakao — based in Singapore, China and South Korea, respectively — for direct app integration so that users can soft-cover Careem taxis on the apps they already use. Grab is the most-used rideshare app in Southeast Asia.