With its panoramic views of the Nile but also of mud homes sinking into flooded swampland, Sudan’s flashiest hotel brings the flair of Muammar Qaddafi and Italian luxury to a capital struggling to keep up.
Burj al-Fateh Hotel — 18 floors of steel and glass shaped like a sail — is a nine-year Libyan dream turned architectural icon that cost US$190 million.
Financed by Lafico, the Libyan Foreign Investment Company, and designed by Italian architects, its 230 rooms, conference facilities, mall, restaurants, sports center and spa set new standards of luxury in Sudan, staff say.
PHOTO: AFP
“The high quality hotel is a landmark which is able to inject new economic and social life into the local community and, in particular, the service sector,” Lafico project director Emhemmed Ghula said in an e-mail.
The hotel has already been dubbed Qaddafi’s ball by bawdy Khartoumites — it has the same double meaning as in English — after the Libyan leader known for his wacky Arab nationalism.
That nickname is not appreciated by Ghula, who distanced Libya’s state-run Lafico from one of the longest-serving leaders in Africa.
“There is no connection whatsoever with any member of the leader’s family with this company,” he said.
In the nine years since Libya first dreamt up the project for its oil-rich north African neighbor, relations between the Qaddafi regime and Washington have undergone a seismic shift of the sort many would like Khartoum to emulate.
In 2006, the US dropped Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism — Sudan is still listed — two years after Qaddafi announced he was abandoning efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
The final obstacle to full Libyan-US rehabilitation came just days before the Burj inauguration ceremony, when Tripoli and Washington on Aug. 14 signed a compensation deal for US reprisals and US victims of Libyan attacks.
Libya’s wings of foreign investment have spread wide, and the hotel’s management describes the Burj as a “gift from the government of Libya to the government of Sudan” to strengthen ties between the two.
It stands adjacent to the Chinese-built Friendship Hall, another Nile-front gift from another government, controversial in the West but intrinsic to the Khartoum boom.
Sudan is on the cusp of a potentially turbulent storm, however. Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, who cut the ribbon at the hotel opening, faces a possible international arrest warrant for alleged genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.
Such a development would ensure his regime is treated as an international pariah, and Beshir warned last week that any International Criminal Court proceedings against him would deter foreigners from investing in Sudan.
But the hotel’s executives are not letting such matters dampen their prospects.
“We are so certain we’re going to make so much money out of this. There is definitely a risk — a risk in the political stability — but those risks are calculated,” US-Lebanese marketing manager Wissam Khalek said.
Sudan has been exporting oil since 1999, and for now at least there is little outward sign of a slowdown in a construction boom fuelled by Arab, Chinese, Indian and Malaysian investment.
Lafico has already begun work on a new tower of luxury serviced hotel apartments with an upscale family leisure center and revolving restaurants budgeted at US$66 million.
The intricate web of unrest, politics and business opportunities is second nature to Khalek, steeped in a backdrop of civil war in Lebanon where Beirut’s Commodore Hotel made a packet from journalists covering the conflict.
With the panache of a US marketing expert, he extols the virtues of the hotel rooms and of a burger he says cannot be beaten by the local competition, despite admitting that his wife and child may be better off in Lebanon.
The distinctive building has already featured as a backdrop to television news reports included on al-Jazeera, and has become a benchmark for the country’s post-oil economic development.
“I feel proud. It’s looking good,” said Giuseppe Freda, project manager from Italy-based company CMC, after an exhausting run-up to the opening. “It can be considered a landmark for Khartoum.”
The presidential suite, now occupied by Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi for the opening, costs US$4,000 a night, and a standard room — or in Burj parlance a “luxurious room and suite” — costs US$250.
Despite logistics nightmares, the furniture and interiors were imported from Europe, mostly from that bastion of international style — Italy.
“It was not easy at all. Sudan lacks the infrastructure,” Ghula said. “Such building requires a lot of special trade and material and nothing can be found in Sudan. Everything had to be outsourced from abroad.”
The Burj al-Fateh Hotel also has a French chef. At Le Grill, the steak comes from Australia and a burger will set you back US$70. The Asian restaurant on the 18th floor, bizarrely called the Rickshaw, boasts breathtaking views.
The mall opens in December, and Khalek insists the shops will be top-end only, “catering to a certain client base.”
The Central Intelligence Agency factbook estimates that 40 percent of Sudanese live in poverty. Only a tiny elite can afford a coffee, let alone a hotel suite or US$2,250 for annual gym membership.
Taiwan aims to open 18 representative offices and seven Taiwan Tourism Information Centers worldwide by next year to attract international visitors, the Tourism Administration said on Saturday. The agency has so far opened three representative offices abroad this year and would open two more before the end of the year, it said. It has also already opened information centers in Jakarta, Mumbai and Paris, and is to open one in Vancouver next month and in Manila in December, it said. Next year, it would also open offices in Amsterdam, Dubai and Sydney, it added. While the Cabinet did not mention international tourists in its
EYES AT SEA: Many marine enthusiasts have expressed interest in volunteering for coastal patrols, which would help identify stowaways and illegal fishing, the CGA said Six thousand coastal patrol volunteers are to be recruited for 159 inspection offices to enhance the nation’s response to “gray zone” conflicts, Coast Guard Administration (CGA) sources said yesterday. Volunteer teams would be established to increase the resilience of coastal defense systems in the wake of two unlawful entries attempted by Chinese over the past three months, Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said. A former Chinese navy captain drove a motorboat into the Tamsui River (淡水河) in Taipei on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival in June, while another Chinese man sailed in a rubber boat into the Houkeng
NEXT LEVEL: The defense ministry confirmed that a video released last month featured personnel piloting new FPV drone systems being developed by the Armaments Bureau Taipei and Washington are pushing for their drone companies to work together to establish a China-free supply chain, the Financial Times reported on Friday. A delegation of high-level executives and US government officials were yesterday to arrive in Taipei to discuss with their Taiwanese counterparts collaboration on drone technology procurement and development, the report said. The executives represent 26 US manufacturers of drone and counter-drone systems, while the officials are from the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, along with Dev Shenoy, principal director for microelectronics in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
‘ANONYMOUS 64’: A national security official said that it is an attempt by China to increase domestic anti-Taiwanese sentiment and inflame cross-strait tensions The Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM) yesterday denied accusations by China that it had undermined regional security by carrying out cyberattacks against targets in China, adding instead that Beijing was responsible for raising tensions and undermining regional peace. The Chinese Ministry of State Security on WeChat accused a hacker group called “Anonymous 64” of targeting China, Hong Kong and Macau starting earlier this year through frequent cyberattacks. The group carried out cyberattacks to seize control of Web sites, outdoor electronic billboards and video-on-demand platforms in China, Hong Kong and Macau, it said, adding the hackers’