'Besieged' Gaza City gets another five-star hotel

Gaza City has another five-star hotel (the AP article below makes it sound like the only five-star hotel in Gaza, but we know that's not true). This hotel is called Arcmed Al Mashtal.

Nearly all of the newly opened hotel's 222 rooms, decked out with ornate metal-worked lamps, flat screen televisions, oversized beds and sea views, sit empty. The tourists whom the developers expected to flood to Gaza when they launched the project 13 years ago are nowhere to be seen. Local residents, most of them living in poverty, can only dream of staying in the gleaming complex.

The eight-story structure is an anomaly in Gaza, yet it cannot escape its surroundings. Residents riding donkey-driven carts occasionally trot by. Women cannot swim in the pool, in a nod to conservative Gaza tradition. There is no alcohol — banned by Hamas in line with Islamic law. On a recent day, two women in conservative Islamic headscarves and loose gowns sipped drinks by the pool, as children splashed inside.

Earlier this month, the hotel's developer, Palestinian investment company Padico decided to finally open it. The company, controlled by politically independent billionaire Munib al-Masri, hopes to recover at least some of its costs and hopes that Gaza's knotty problems may finally be solved in the coming years.

"Its risky — but we need to have a change in Gaza," said public relations manager Shadi Agha.

For now, the risk is not paying off. There are no foreign tourists in Gaza, just a handful of Western aid officials who pass through.

Only 80 rooms are even available. Management doesn't want to spend on maintenance for the remaining rooms, Agha said. Early this month, there were just 10 guests in the entire hotel, though the royal suite, at $880 a night, was occupied.

The guests ranged from international aid officials to a honeymooning Gaza couple who wanted to go somewhere nice, Agha said. He wouldn't identify them further or say who was in the royal suite.

Maybe they should try marketing it to western aid officials. After all, they have the money to spend.