The difference between the world’s best airport and Britain’s ‘worst’? Everything works

Should I buy the “Dots & Ribs” condoms, the “Power Up intimate cream for men” or the “Play Vibrations stimulation ring for both partners”? Airport retail opportunities can be terribly glamorous, I sigh swooningly to myself as I check the prices (£3, £4 and £3 respectively, since you ask). And really, who needs the elegant Hermès, Gucci, Valentino and Tiffany boutiques of Qatar’s Doha airport when you’ve got such varied (if slightly seedy) options at this vending machine right here in the gents’ toilet at Manchester’s Terminal 2?

Perhaps it was these difficult what-to-wear decisions – all three sound so tempting – that led to Manchester being named “Britain’s most stressful airport” in recent research (although the experts behind the study claim it was based, more boringly, on lost luggage levels, parking costs and punctuality figures). Worse, all three of Manchester’s terminals made the bottom five in Which? magazine’s 2024 survey of the UK’s airports.

Meanwhile, in April, Doha’s Hamad International won “world’s best airport” at the prestigious Skytrax Awards (like the Oscars for runways and baggage carousels, except Amsterdam Schiphol never slapped Chicago O’Hare for making a joke about Schiphol’s wife). It would be invidious to compare, of course, but since all these awards judges seem to be doing it, I’m about to compare a lot. In fact, I’m taking a flight from Manchester to Doha with the specific aim of pitting the Arabian pearl against Wythenshawe’s finest.

It all starts so promisingly, too, when I’m directed off my train to something called the Skylink. It sounds sci-fi, it looks sci-fi (lit neon-blue in the late-night darkness), but – possibly because I’ve arrived just after the cleaners – it smells like Nanna’s house after she’s finished with the TCP.

There are hoardings all along the elevated walkway trumpeting Terminal 2’s “transformation” with a series of computer-generated renders of what the place will look like £1.3 billion later – which is, apparently, exactly like an airport. Except the notably diverse crowd of people depicted are all smiling.

Behind the hoardings are some non-working travelators; when I get to my terminal it’s entirely empty except for one man trying to sleep between a pair of stanchions; but I notice that the bars of all the airport hotels are buzzing. This I take as a promising sign – until I check in at the Ibis Budget and see why. I can either shuffle the three paces back and forth that the layout of my room allows, like a death row convict; look out the window into an almost identical cell across the car park at the Holiday Inn; or have a tin of Stella in the lobby.

On the plus side, next morning it’s only a few more shuffling paces – 90 seconds’ walk, even with a recidivist wheelie case – from the Ibis to Terminal 2. Now I’m at the departures end of things, I can see what they’ve been spending their money on. The place looks fantastic: a sleek, white, futuristic-but-also-slightly-art-deco space, with great lighting and sunshine streaming in through a partly glass ceiling. There’s a vibrant red bit, where Jet2 does its thing, and a cheerful sky-blue bit, for Tui – a pleasing symmetry with Manchester’s two big football clubs – and when I go through to security, I find that two of the lanes have got those clever new scanners where you don’t have to lay your liquids and laptops – and dignity – out for public consumption.

I also find that literally everyone is friendlier than at London’s airports. Even when one of those epauletted types pulls me over to rummage round in my hand luggage, she calls me “love” and offers a reassuring chuckle where her opposite number at Heathrow would have strip-searched and tasered me.

Once through, I’m in a nice, smart, agreeably walkable departures lounge, with plenty of space to sit (and stylish wood-and-leather seats). Sex-aid vending machine aside, the retail choices are limited – though I enjoy the “I ❤️ Manchester” section in the bookshop, which is 30 per cent hastily ghosted autobiographies of footballers, 10 per cent hastily ghosted autobiographies of footballers’ wives, 5 per cent books by Shaun Ryder (he’s written two! That’s nearly as many as Kafka!), and 55 per cent crime thrillers set in the city with block-capital titles such as BRUTAL and VICE, unlikely to have tourists rushing to visit their locations.

There is an entire week’s worth of food and drink joints, though. At one end, see elegant Say Carlo, with its soft cornflower-blue banquettes and lovely cherry-blossom tree thing in the middle, and where breakfast options include “grilled courgette and aubergine with cannellini beans, chilli tomatoes, sauteed spinach and sourdough”. And at the other, enter the Amber Alehouse, where bacon and sausage butties are served alongside pints of 7 Brothers Juicy IPA (6% ABV, so you can both cure and create your hangover simultaneously) beneath arty black-and-white pictures of noted epicure Liam Gallagher.

Boarding, like all the other actual-airporty stuff, is smooth, and we’re on our way to Doha dead on schedule. Clearly my critical faculties would be as numbed as my bottom after seven hours in economy, so I insist on business class – but fear I may have overdone it. Qatar Airways’ 6ft 7in lie-flat seats, sliding-door suites with “do not disturb” indicators, and a “light lobster lunch” mean I deplane deeply content and in a mood to overlook even the longest bus ride to arrivals.

Which is lucky, because Doha is a big, busy international hub with only one terminal (however many “nodes” they say it’s got), and I’ve had some of the longest airport-bus-rides of my life here: after 12 minutes of endless perimeter roads, I started to wonder if the driver might have got lost or the operation has been outsourced to Arriva.

The buses, in fact, typify one of the complaints raised about Hamad International – that, even more than elsewhere, your airport experience depends on how rich you are, with fast-track everything for premium passengers, and some fairly faffy security-screening and transfer arrangements for the rest of us. The buses come in economy (which look like buses), business (which look spacious and splendid, with plush leather seats) and first (which look like gentlemen’s clubs on wheels).

The terminal itself is busy – it always is, with 700 flights a day – but everything works. The huge round central nexus bustles like Tokyo’s famous Shibuya pedestrian crossing, with passengers beetling efficiently across from one wing to another; and where Manchester had broken-down travelators, Doha has a slick, driverless monorail inside the terminal, taking 90 seconds to save you nine minutes’ walk.

There are reading rooms (where no one is reading because they’re all playing with their phones), there are art installations (same), there are children’s play areas (where parents are paying attention, because the climby stuff is, perhaps unwisely, made of hard, bruise-inducing bronze).

And, of course, there are shops. Hermès and the rest, it turns out, aren’t even the daftest. That title belongs to a store that sells gold – not just jewellery but actual solid slabs of the stuff – and is called, with all the subtlety you’d expect from the local super-rich, Gold.

Further wallet-emptying opportunities are found at the far north end of the terminal, around the Orchard. This spectacular, 65,000 sq ft indoor forest opened in 2022, and though it’s arguably a (literal) fig leaf for yet more high-end retail – Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Armani et al cluster round it, in much the same way JD Sports sits near the lavvies at Manchester – it’s also rather lovely. Above it, a great curved geodesic glass ceiling lets in light, and looks only slightly like a sci-fi movie’s interstellar spaceship shortly before the computer malfunctions and starts killing all the poor hyper sleeping humans.

You can walk through it at canopy height on a nice curved walkway, or potter around its verdant green spaces at ground level. Down there, there’s a slight “tramps in the municipal park” vibe thanks to the number of people having a kip on the benches (no cider, fortunately) – but this is still, unquestionably, the nicest bit of airport I’ve ever been to.

Was I sorry to leave, then? Well, not so much. And therein lies the rub (or pub, if it’s Manchester). Because yes, Hamad is brilliant, and Manchester is making great efforts to be so; but airports are only ever going to be a necessary evil, like estate agents or Michael Ball. The best will always be the one you can leave quickest.

Ed Grenby travelled as a guest of Qatar Airways (qatarairways.com). Manchester-Doha returns cost from £630, or £3,256 in business class.