I read (and re read several times!) this thread to understand what we need to do during our arrival into DOH this morning, as we have STPC (staying at the Oryx Rotana).

Given that I am slightly prone to overthinking/overplanning (as others reading this may also be prone to) I thought it would be helpful to explain how we had a slightly different process to anything mentioned above.

We we arrived into an E gate into an area where transfer passengers were subject to security checks (that was my first worry gone, that we’d have to go backwards through security somehow!) Anyway, we headed to security and I looked for the transit accommodation counter - no sign of anything marked up as such. I approached someone to ask and he said that they didn’t have this facility at this area of the airport and that we needed to get the transit train to the B gate area and look there.

So, off on the transit train, then followed signs to transfers, and arrived to find loads of security check points plus at the back of the area a bank of desks (sales, ticketing queries, plus 2 desks marked Transit Accommodation - City Hotel!) Excellent! Queued for a while - but got our documents no problem. Then downstairs to immigration to find a bit of a zoo - Huge queues everywhere. We were through in about 30 mins or so, then straight through baggage reclaim into the outside area. There were a lot of people standing around with passenger names on boards but not ours, but we were directed to a man with an Oryx Rotana clipboard who offered us the choice of a car in 15 mins or to join the shuttle bus in 5 (we went with the shuttle).

just to round out the (longwinded) story - we had a few minutes to queue at the hotel on arrival but we were in the room about 1.5 hours from landing at DOH.