Qatar Airways has a tremendous lounge in Doha that is in the running for the best business class lounge in the world.
We had a couple hours between our flight from Casablanca and connection to Colombo, giving us a chance to return to Qatar’s excellent Al Mourjan Business Class Lounge. This was not my first visit, but this is the first time I’ve posted a review.
The lounge is massive. And spacious. And minimalist. That is a winning combination.
I took a lot of pictures — good pictures, I think — and so this will be more of a photo tour than overly descriptive. But a couple thoughts.
First, the staff was very kind. I had a long conversation with the Sri Lankan chef about life in Doha and flight benefits. Every staff member I encountered seemed anxious to serve.
Second, the lounge is not designed for sleeping, but it’s not a bad place to spend an overnight layover. Qatar Airways now offers free hotel rooms for transit passengers, but there are worse places to be stuck than a 24/7 lounge with two restaurants, a well-stocked bar (though Krug is no longer served…) and and plenty of seats to relax in.
Here’s a look at the amazing lounge:
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Business Lounge Seating
I hope my pictures make clear the enormous scale of this lounge: it seats over 1,000 guests.
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Business Lounge Baggage Room
Need to store your bag? Combination lockers are available.
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Business Lounge Smoking
The pictures below were the two hardest to get, as the smoking lounge (as one might expect in the Middle East) was typically very busy.
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Business Lounge Prayer Room
For Islamic guests, prayer room is available.
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Lounge Business Center
The business center is huge! Computer work stations, printers, and even a a large conference room is at your disposal.
Throughout the lounge, automated departure boards keep you updated on your flight. There are no flight departure announcements…or loud music for that matter. The lounge is beautifully serene.
Drink stations are also located all over the lounge so you can always stay hydrated.
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Lounge Game Room
If you need a break form the kids, a game room should keep them occupied.
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Business Lounge Dining
The lounge has two main dining areas — a café that serves sandwiches and a main buffet/bar upstairs.
The café offers tremendous sandwiches made-to-order.
Proceed upstairs to the main dining room where there is sufficient seating for several hundred and a 24-hour buffet of food from around the world. The bar is also always open.
Qatar Airways Al Mourjan Business Lounge Showers
Showers are available and unlike in the Al-Safwa First Class lounge, complimentary.
Other bathrooms are located throughout the lounge.
CONCLUSION
I think you’ll agree this is an amazing lounge on so many levels. Just putting this together today makes me regret not leaving more time to layover on my upcoming Qatar Airways trip.
I visited today. Need to get rid of the dudes in the toilet #creepy
This lounge is awesome is so many levels! We were travelling with our 7 month daughter and they have separate quiet family areas as well as separate room with a couple of cribs for the babies.
Was it so empty the whole time you were there or did you have to wait for the crowd to thin out?
I missed my opportunity to visit before AA gutted their chart and I also seem to miss every golden ticket promo so I didn’t have to check it out myself.
It empties out around 2am.
Wow, I love your enthusiasm!
“Drink stations are also located all over the world….”
If that were only true. 😉
It is a beautiful, peaceful lounge. That is true. I was there for 4+ hours last year transiting from India. I wasn’t around when the Vietnam fare thing was happening last week so I missed out on that. I would have certainly booked something just to fly around for fun and points….but would have definitely tried for a long layover.
Well, true statement indeed, but I’ve now corrected it! 😉
great snaps amigo.
Truth be told, I’m not a fan of minimalism, at all, so the lounge doesn’t look like my style. I know it’s the in thing these days, but it always strikes me as cold and garish. Nevertheless, the actual product looks very impressive.
Yes nice pics. Actually make the lounge look better than in real life. It’s a nice big lounge but I find it oddly uncomfortable on a middle of the night stopover. It’s a bit style over function.
I’ve spent 36 hours of my life in this lounge over the years. The bar is cold, sterile and feels like a bar designed by people who have never been to a bar and saw one on Star Trek The Next Generation. The food looks like it might be good but such ideas will lead to disappointment in this lounge if you dare try something. Just the hummus made my Lebanese friend gag. The enormous pool makes you feel like you’re in a moldy depressing dark dungeon or some underground cave deep in the earth inhabited by McKinsey trolls in wrinkled dockers. Arab desserts, usually a high point of visiting a middle eastern or Levant country, are disgusting in this lounge (also made my arab friends gag). One of the sleeping/quiet areas opens onto the general terminal so you hear the cacophonous echo of every screaming poorly-raised hell beast as they circle their elephantine progenitors. There are few bathrooms and getting to them requires a circuitous Legend of Zelda like quest around giant pools and across bridges over the seating areas. When you return to your seat you’ll find it uncomfortable. The little screens next to you are useless. The sandwiches are thin, 99% bread and gross. The side dishes look good but when you taste them, they’re are all bad. The buffet food lacks flavor and ranges from barely edible to disgusting. There are no windows, no natural light, not even the illusion of fresh air that modern airports try to provide. My architect friend calls it one of the worst designed hugely-expensive spaces public spaces in the world. But that’s really applicable to the entire airport which is dreadful in the true spirit of the word. The opposite of a desert tent which takes an arid, unforgiving landscape and provides a sense of comfort, friends/community and home. Instead you just get the desert. But look a big staircase…
I agree, I’ve been there three times and while the initial sense of space is impressive, I’ve found it anything but user friendly. Start off by the disorganised queue at the bottom of the escalator to visit it, because somehow this can’t be done at the enormous front desk?
On the last occasion I couldn’t get a shower (they are spread across two locations – which isn’t clear at all, neither shower facility communicates with the other, so you can get into a queue for a shower at one, when there is a shorter queue at another), after over 17 hours flying from Auckland because the waiting list was half an hour and I didn’t have that long before needing to go on the epic journey to my next gate. There are few bathrooms (and so it is an epic walk to find one). I found the food very uninspiring and bland, although presented as if it is something else. Dessert/cakes that taste like what they are – frozen mass-produced for appearance not taste.
Wifi was airport wifi, not particularly fast and yes the bar seemed staffed by people who don’t go to bars or drink (and of course on one occasion it was Ramadan so forget getting wine).
It looks amazing, but functionally it is appalling. It’s not a reason to transit Doha. Bling over substance.
I was afraid to be alone among all these reporters to find this lounge a total failure,Congratulation for your in-depth analysis which is a perfect study of all errors not to be done by a real architect.
your friends gag a lot, maybe it is just you 😉
you haven;t mentioned a single positive aspect … everything is bad, how can we take this comment seriously?
If only more travel bloggers took the time and effort to document lounges the way you did here. I feel you walked me with your detailed pics around the entire perimeter. Gracias por incluirnos en tus aventuras alrededor del mundo!
In a couple of weeks, I’ll be connecting through there with only a 1 hour and 50 minute layover.
Do you think that will be enough time for me to visit the lounge?
For what it’s worth, I arrive at 5:25AM and depart at 7:15AM.
You’ll still have time. Stop by and have a grilled panini if you are hungry.
I absolutely adore this lounge- along with the stellar business class product Qatar offers and their numerous sales, it is one of the main reasons Qatar is my airline of choice on long haul east-bound trips. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find anything much better. Thanks Matthew for your great and detailed reviews- this is fast becoming my favourite airline blog!
Good luck getting to a shower. Excellent facility but almost impossible to get a shower in under an hour from registering for the queue
So I you are flying long haul and hope to shower between long legs you are very likely to be sorely disappointed
I have experienced this several times so it is a consistent problem that they are not addressing
A real shame since we like everything else about the Qatar business experience
I was there in early Nov. 2017 and there were tall cubicle-type areas in the back with chaise-lounge type furniture where you could nap or sleep. I don’t see any pics of these, so maybe they are new?