Prescriptive analytics for FIFA World Cup lodging capacity planning

Abstract

The FIFA World Cup, comprising sixty-four matches spanning an entire month, has, in recent years, been attended by about three million spectators of which over half a million are visitors requiring lodging. Planning lodging capacity for an event of this magnitude is necessary for host nations where pre-existing infrastructures are either inadequate or lacking. This paper develops an optimization analytics framework that sequentially employs two integer programming models for foreign spectator analysis and the consequent lodging requirements. The framework is applied to assess the preparedness of lodging infrastructure in Qatar for FIFA 2022.

Keywords:

• capacity planning
• FIFA World Cup
• optimization
• prescriptive analytics

Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by Qatar National Research Fund under Grant Number NPRP 6-248-5-023. We thank Qatar Tourism Authority for providing data on existing and planned lodging in Qatar.

Notes

1 Asian Football Confederation (AFC); Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF); The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF); Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL); Oceania Football Confederation (OFC); Union des Associations Européennes de Football (UEFA).

2 The nations in this pot are: Germany (DEU), Argentina (ARG), Brazil (BRA), Uruguay (URY), Netherlands (NDL), Portugal (PRT), France (FRA), and Belgium (BEL).

3 The unlikely case where spectators attend matches 1 and 3, but skip match 2, is ruled out.

4 The number of slots that FIFA allocates for CAF and UEFA is certain, respectively 5 and 13. For AFC, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, and OFC, the allocation is, respectively 4.5, 3.5, 4.5, and 0.5. The “half-slots,” are determined by qualifying matches between teams from these confederations. No OFC nations are included. Only one OFC nation has been included in 4 World Cups (1974, 1982, 2006 and 2010) of which Australia, now in AFC, participated twice.