Real Madrid football club will spend $1bn to build a lavish resort island in the United Arab Emirates, complete with luxury hotels, marina and amusement park.
Executives unveiled plans for the “Real Madrid Resort Island”, featuring an oceanside stadium and hi-tech club museum in the northern Emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah, on the doorstep of the lucrative football-mad Asian market.
“Real Madrid Resort Island will be a major tourist and sporting centre of great dimensions and the highest level,” club president Florentino Perez said.
Not content with loading professional chefs onto its planes, Etihad has now gone one step further by sourcing daily produce from an organic farm in the UAE.
The products are provided by Abu Dhabi Organics Farms, a prize-winning outfit which is managing to cultivate vegetables and fruits and raise cows, chickens and goats despite the blistering heat of the desert that surrounds it.
The Al Habtoor Group, a UAE-based development firm, plans to build a new triple-hotel complex in the heart of the Emirate as part of a $1.3 billion project.
The “Habtoor Palace”. formed of two skyscrapers rising from a five-storey podium base, will see over 1,600 rooms added to Dubai‘s hotel scene.
The rest of the complex is designed as a ‘lifestyle experience,’ Al Habtoor says, with a luxury spa and multiple restaurants and banqueting facilities.
A fall in Abu Dhabi‘s hotel prices has prompted a record year for the Emirate so far, according to figures released July 27.
The first six months of 2011 showed the best hotel results in the history of the country, with the number of visitors climbing 11 percent to just over one million.
Authorities hope to break the two million visitor target for the first time this year.
Prada said on Wednesday it will open stores across the Middle East as part of a joint venture with Emirates luxury retailer Al Tayer Insignia to develop a new retail network.
“The joint venture company, headquartered in Dubai, will oversee the roll out of Prada and Miu Miu stores across the region, leveraging on Al Tayer Insignia’s market knowledge and expertise,” a joint company statement said.
The new retail network will see stores opened in Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, it said.
Luxury hotels in the United Arab Emirates are offering their guests an Arabian fantasy as Britain’s Prince William marries Catherine Middleton on Friday.
The Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, promises “a majestic experience fit for a king and deserving of an emperor” and said it wants to make the day unforgettable for its guests too.
The Palace, which bills itself as a seven-star hotel, offered an overnight stay from a modest $450 to $1,500 (300-1,010 euros) with a royal high tea thrown in.
