Dubai hotel launches luxury resort project
Jumeirah International is to open the first phase of Madinat Jumeirah, a 3.5km-long luxury resort in Dubai, this September.
The 292-bedroom Mina A'Salam hotel is being dubbed a grand boutique hotel, which Jumeirah claims will offer style and luxury on a large scale.
When fully operational in September 2004, the resort will have a further 300-bedroom hotel and a 340-room villa complex. It will also feature 57 restaurants, a souk-style retail complex, the region's largest conference and banqueting facilities and a spa linked by 3km of waterways served by traditional water taxis.
Jumeirah sales and marketing director Bill Walshe expects business to come from the rising number of people who use Dubai as a stopover to locations such as the Maldives.
"If we could get 10% more people to stay one night each in a hotel in Dubai then we would have enough to fill all the new capacity that is coming on stream," he said.
Madinat Jumeirah is the international group's most ambitious project to date. It marks another phase of big, brash hotel developments in Dubai, now referred to by some as the Las Vegas of the Middle East. The group also owns the Burj al Arab, a property in the sea shaped like a sail, and the Jumeirah Beach hotel, a waterfront property shaped like a wave.
Dubai is also in line for 40 new hotels on the Palms, two man-made islands in the shape of palm trees stretching up to 10 miles out to sea. Le Méridien, Hilton, Kempinski and Sofitel have signed up for this project.
