India’s hospitality workers head to the World Cup

fate of anyone running a hotel in Kerala these days, Bijoy George is a man with too much to do. Before pandemic-induced lockdowns began in 2020, he managed 40 employees at the Eighth Bastion Hotel near the old Dutch cemetery in the charming historic quarter of Kochi, a bustling coastal city. Now that business is back to pre-covid levels he needs the same number of staff again. But he has only 20 workers. His plight is shared with every other hotel, café and bar. It is a result of the state’s hospitality employees moving en masse to Qatar, not to watch football but to take up employment tied to the World Cup.As the start of the competition approaches on November 20th, workers are quitting at a rate Mr George says he has never seen in his 22 years in the business. Qatar, a country with a population of under 3m, will have welcomed more than 1.5m visitors before the matches conclude on December 18th. That means finding staff to run all the new hotels that have been built along with other venues that have been pressed into service to profit from the revelry of raucous sports fans.