Dubai is throwing a multi-million-dollar extravaganza on Thursday to launch a luxury hotel on an artificial palm-shaped island, despite the bite from the global financial crisis.
More than 2,000 world celebrities are due to attend the event which has been dubbed by the local press as "the party of the decade."
Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, actors Robert De Niro and Denzel Washington, and former basketball great Michael Jordan are expected to walk the red carpet at the 1.5-billion-dollar "Atlantis, The Palm" hotel.
The evening will peak with a fireworks display that will be "seven times larger than this year's Olympic Games opening ceremony" in Beijing and will be "visible from space", according to the event organisers.
The event will cost a hefty 20 million dollars, said Sol Kerzner, the South African billionnaire, hotel and gambling tycoon, who is organising the bash.
"We built something that's quite extraordinary. We've got to tell the world about it," Kerzner told AFP about the lavish hotel which was built through a joint venture with giant local developer Nakheel.
Nakheel, which is controlled by the Dubai government, has built some of the most iconic projects that have put the Gulf emirate on the world map, including a cluster of islands making the shape of the world.
Located at the trunk-top of the Palm Jumeirah, one of three palm-shaped islands, Atlantis occupies the entire central part of a huge breakwater.
The 1,539-room hotel is made up of two pale rose towers, which are linked by a bridge which houses a 35,000-dollar-a-night suite.
Management says there is a waiting list of guests for the suite.
The Dubai hotel is inspired by the original Atlantis that Kerzner built in the Bahamas but is not an average 5-star hotel.
It boasts the largest waterpark in the Middle East and a gigantic aquarium in which 65,000 fish, along with an enormous whale shark, swim in 11 million litres of water.
The project was conceived at a time before the global economic crisis began biting the Gulf emirate.
But Kerzner says he is optimistic about the future, adding that he designed the hotel "for the medium to longer term."
The hotel opened unofficially on September 24 and has had an occupancy rate of 80 percent, Kerzner said. "We don't know how long it's going to take for the economy around the world to take off again," he added.
The financial meltdown has affected Dubai and other Gulf emirates.
The local stock market has crashed, losing two thirds of its value since the beginning of the year, and Dubai's real estate sector, a major driving force of domestic economy, has begun to stutter.
Even Nakheel, Kerzner's partner in the Atlantis, announced on Monday that it would scale down its activities.
The bulk of Dubai's tourists come from European countries, mainly Britain, which also have been hard hit by the crisis, and this could have a direct impact on Atlantis.
Kerzner, 73, acquired his fame and fortune in the 1970s and 1980s by building hotels and casinos in South Africa, including the prestigious resort Sun City.
He appears to share with Dubai the same taste for challenges and larger-than-life projects, which might explain the partnership between this Jewish businessman and the Arab sheikhs who rule this Gulf emirate.
His Kerzner International also has not escaped unscathed from the global financial crisis.
The company recently laid off 800 of its employees at Paradise Island Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas because of a sharp drop in the number of American visitors.
[source]
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