Croatia Changes its Base Camp in Doha

After the Hilton Doha Hotel was made available following the failure of one national teams that had failed to qualify for the World Cup during the March international week, the HNS quickly reacted and changed its priority hotel option from the Dusit Hotel to the Hilton Doha Hotel.

The Hilton Hotel is paired with the Al Ersal 3 training center, which is equivalent to the Al Ersal 2 center that was used by the Croatian national team during the recent friendly tournament in Doha.  The superior training conditions of this center in comparison to the Al Gharafa training center (which is paired with Hotel Dusit) was a deciding factor in the decision to change the team’s base camp. In addition to this, the Hilton Doha Hotel is one of only five hotels (out of the 40 offered in the FIFA catalogue) that has an adjacent beach, which allows for additional outdoors activities.

“The Dusit is an excellent hotel that fulfilled all of our conditions – however, when the opportunity presented itself to reserve this camp, we reacted quickly and organized an inspection, after which we spoke with our head coach and captain, both of whom were in support of this decision. The biggest advantage with this new camp is the training center, which is a lot closer to the hotel and which has better conditions for players, which was our priority when choosing a base camp,” said HNS president Marijan Kustić.

“We’re very happy that the HNS was quick to react to this opportunity – within less than 24 hours, we had already finalized our change of priority choice. The Dusit is an excellent hotel, but we have objectively superior training conditions here, which will be similar to what we saw during this previous week and which will undoubtedly provide us with the perfect working conditions. In addition to this, it will definitely be a plus for our players to be able to spend time outdoors during the day, which wouldn’t be an option if we had chosen a city hotel like the Dusit. As FIFA had featured only five resort-style hotels in its catalogue, we’re very happy to have secured one of them. This is a big win for the Croatian delegation, and I want to congratulate the management and administration of the HNS on a job well done,” said head coach Zlatko Dalić.

The HNS has thus secured the Hilton Doha/Al Ersal 3 base camp as its priority option, with the final contract to be signed by April 30, which is the final date until which participating national teams can change their base camp options.

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