19/03/2012
EXCLUSIVE: Man-made beach hotel set for Doha city centre in 2013
By Shane McGinley
Sunday, 18 March 2012 8:36 AM
Qatar is set to add a new hotel attraction to its hospitality landscape in 2013, a city centre hotel complete with a man-made beach, a wave pool, rivers, a waterfall and an 18-hole golfing green, a spokesperson for the company behind the project told Arabian Business.
Ghanem Al Thani Holdings, owner of the Ramada Plaza Doha hotel, is currently in negotiations with a number of hotel operators to open a water-themed hotel in the centre of the Qatari capital in late 2013, Gordon MacKenzie, general manager of the Ramada Plaza Doha told Arabian Business in an interview this week.
"We don’t have a beach [at Ramada Plaza Doha], but we are going to rectify that with our new hotel. We are having a beach there in the middle of the city centre,” he explained. “It will be a water-themed hotel… With water at the front, a river runs all the way through reception [under a] glass floor, all the way out the back, to culminate in a waterfall and a wave pool.
“It will be absolutely magic. It will be a man-made beach… It is going to be fun, it will be challenging and it will be an attraction,” he added.
The 360-room property will have banqueting facilities for 2,400 people and will also include golfing facilities.
“It will also have an 18-hole putting green… The majority of hotels go down to nine holes, but we are going the full 18,” MacKenzie said.
While the company is “in the throw of negotiations at the moment”, Mackenzie said the hotel “should be opening at the earliest in August/September 2013.”