David Beckham will be the face of a new multi-million pound Qatar 2022 tourism drive.... with a trip lined up to the five-star resort 'Banana Island'.
The breathtaking sanctuary and spa includes magnificent 'floating rooms' on stilts above the sea. They come with their own infinity pool and villa host to prepare food and cater to your every need.
And the star, nicknamed Goldenballs, will be able to relax on the 'desert island paradise' which gets its name because it bends like one of his famous free kicks.
The Mirror was given a VIP guided tour of Banana Island which will see celebrities, footballers - and their wives - bend it like Beckham at the Arab world's first ever World Cup. It offers £3,500-a-night floating rooms, picturesque beaches, stunning sunset views and even 'Spice Spoons' cooking class - (just in case Posh comes too).
Beckham, 47, paid a reputed £150m to promote Qatar, will also be seen riding on a motorbike through the capital Doha.
The campaign will not just promote the World Cup - with tickets going on sale to millions of fans on Tuesday.
It will encourage air travellers who pass through Qatar en route to worldwide destinations every year to take a 'stopover' holiday.
Berthold Trenkel, chief operating officer for Qatar Tourism, said: "David Beckham is a great story, he is a great guy and he is such a celebrity.
"He is well known in the US, he is of course well known in the UK and the rest of Europe.
"He can show what you can do in 48 or 96 hours here."
He added: "Around 96 percent of air traffic into Qatar passes through. So how do we get more people out to enjoy a few nights here?"
Beckham may provide the answers.
He was filmed meeting 'Qataris from all walks of life'. And his 36-minute film will be seen by millions of footy fans on Qatar Airlines.
Berthold added: "The world cup will attract people who have never been to Qatar.
"We want to reset misconceptions, that it is not safe or it is not fun. We know people will come away thinking 'wow, this is really different'.
"The average person does not have a camel. They live in a nice apartment, in winter you do not need the air conditioning, it is 65C.
"The footballers are not going to be sweating because of the heat, but because they are running around."
Berthold insisted that many of the fears of fans from the LGBT community were unfounded.
"If you go to Rome and visit the Vatican, you adjust your behaviour accordingly," he said.
"When you travel, you want to experience something new. This is a chance to enjoy what the Middle East has to offer - in Qatar you still see the Arab world, experience the culture."
More than 1m World Cup tickets go on sale on a first come first served basis on Tuesday. There is likely to be huge demand, including from tens of thousands of England and Wales fans.
The UK already among the countries making the most applications.
Helaka Morahela, sales manager of the Banana Island resort, believes they will have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
"We have so many different nationalities living here, so many different cultures, and they have been here for decades," he said.
"There are about 500,000 Qataris in a 2.8m population, with people from all different parts of the world, India, Syria, Iran, South east
Asia, and all of the European nations at the World Cup.
"I just met three Mexican travel agents, we have people coming from Poland, from China, and we've had a lot of requests from the UK.
"We will see coaches and their wives, we will have a lot of VIPs and celebrities, they love the over-water villas popular in the Maldives."
All visitors, stars and ordinary fans alike, will have to have a ticket for the World Cup, as it will act as your visa.
So there will be no place for the hundreds of thousands of ticketless fans who have travelled to tournaments in the past.
There will be a huge demand for accommodation in the Arab state, which is the size of Yorkshire.
It will see its 2.8m population rise by at least 1m. A total of 3m tickets are being sold, with around 130,000 rooms - equating to 3.6m room nights - likely to be available.
Omar al-Jaber, of the local organising committee, said 25,000 bookings had been taken so far. Nations will not be kept apart in fans' accommodation, which may raise security concerns.
Any risk of trouble is likely to be curtailed by Qatar's strict laws on drinking in public, cost of travel, tickets and accommodation. Mr al-Jaber, a Qatar 2022 executive director, said: "We went to the last World Cup and Russia was amazing. But our plan is to have something different because we are a small country.
"You are in one place and in one booking, you can visit more than one stadium and more than one city, you do not need to travel far to cover matches.
"We would like to offer the fans more than one option in accommodation. We are providing cruise ships, fan villages, hotels, apartments, or staying with family or friends.
"We expect more than 1m fans, and we can say that we have more than 100,000 rooms available. More than 25,000 bookings are complete, with 1.2m tickets sold.
"We will be under pressure until the first match, and we are ready for that. Our message to everyone is that you have to have a fan ID, a match ticket and accommodation."
The World Cup hosts are promising a "variety of price options", with tariffs at the fan village from £66 a night, based on two sharing. Options will also include "house cabins" that look like luxury sheds, and self-catering apartments in hotels. Barwa Al Janoub resort starts at £80, and serviced West Bay apartments are £260.
A six-bed villa, for up to 12 people, is priced from £700, while Lusail apartments are £220 a night. Rates at the four-star Poesia ship begin at around £136 a night.
Cruise births cost £260 to £385, with suites at £1,900 per night. Mr al-Jaber added: "We cannot separate the fans. If they want to book 50 or 100 rooms then we find what is available for them and in which area. We are not saying this area is for Brazil, for Argentina, for Spain, we are not doing that."
In 2019, the Mirror revealed that some stadium workers from the poorest nations were paid the equivalent of 82 pence an hour.
The Qataris have since improved workers' rights, and are making charitable donations to projects in those workers' countries, like India, Pakistan and Nepal.
