Press

The eagerly awaited grand unveiling of Armani Hotels’ first venture is set to take place this week: a 39-floor, five-star hotel housed in the Burj Khalifa. With 160 guest rooms and suites and 144 residential apartments, it’s no small venture. The launch itself is shrouded in secrecy, but, as with any opening in this city, the press, both here and internationally, will be quick to pass judgment as soon as they get a peek inside.

Global investors put their faith in Dubai's economy, making the emirate the first and most-preferred choice for future investments in the Middle East, according to an international survey released yesterday. And 81 per cent of those surveyed who have investments in Dubai plan to maintain or increase their investments in the next three years.

Dubai-based Emaar Hospitality Group is scouting for partners to make its India foray. The company plans to bring in its five star hotel brand ‘The Address’ in the Indian market. “We are at discussion stage with some companies,” Marc Francois-Dardenne, Chief Executive Officer, Emaar Hospitality told Business Standard.

It may well be the tallest building on the planet, but the Burj Khalifa can no longer boast the fastest lifts in the world. That record has now been clinched by the new 1 080 metre/minute lift in the 212.75-metre-high G1 Tower being built by Hitachi in Hitachinaka City, Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan. This will also be the tallest lift research facility in the world.

The 75-year-old designer opened his first hotel at the world's tallest tower in Dubai last month and plans a new hotel in Milan in 2011, as he keeps investors guessing on the future of his company.

The cheapest room, a 45-square-metre Armani Studio, costs $1,525 a night. The priciest, a 235-square-metre Armani Signature room, will cost you $4,900 a night, about $550 more than the most expensive suite at Dubai’s sail-shaped Burj Al Arab, the world’s first seven-star hotel.

If the project goes ahead, it would top the Taipei 101 Tower, the Shanghai World Financial Centre and Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers – the world's three tallest buildings after the 828m Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

We covered the grand opening ceremony of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa Tower, formerly called Burj Dubai. But amidst all the fireworks and fanfare, does this 818 meter high monument to human engineering achievement represent any innovations towards combating global warming, climate change, or other environmental breakthough – or is it simplyanother “Tower of Babel,” constructed by misguided human beings still trying to build us a city and a tower with its top in heaven?

More recently, passengers were left stranded between floors after their lift car broke down inside the Burj Khalifa. And, in March this year, British former F1 driver Stirling Moss broke his ankles after falling down an elevator shaft in London.

Maybe the Ritz-Carlton saw the Armani Hotel Dubai in the Burj Khalifa--the current tallest building in the world--as a challenge. Or, maybe the hotel group just wanted to create some local competition with the Park Hyatt Shanghai (to date the highest rooftop observation deck in Asia).