Credit crunch hits Atlantis
November 23, 2008
Rooms at the $1.5bn Atlantis hotel have been slashed by up to 90% and are now being sold for as little as $44 a night according to a newspaper report.
A room at Dubai's latest five star hotel, which had its launch party last week, had been selling at $454 a night when it first opened on September 24th.
The massive slash in price comes as the credit crunch begins to bite into Dubai's tourism industry, and hotels begin to respond by lowering rates to stimulate demand. Hotel occupancy is running as low as 26% at Atlantis according to the Gulf News, a Dubai-based newspaper.
During the boom years, Dubai Inc. boasted one of the highest hotel occupancy rates in the world, with five star resorts regularly at over 80% occupancy.
Atlantis marked its launch last week with a performance by Australian pop star Kylie Minogue and a fireworks display said to be more expensive than those used for the Beijing Olympics.
Despite the carefully controlled PR, Atlantis has not had the smoothest of openings.
On September 2 a fire destroyed the hotel lobby roof and caused smoke damage to the outside of the main hotel building and the hotel has come under global scrutiny for its capture of Sammy, a 13ft whale shark. Just last week an internal memo was sent out detailing confidential details of the planned movements and rooms of the hotel's celebrity guests.