Dubai’s new dream hotel has a nightmare opening week

Gregor McClenaghan

• Last Updated: October 05. 2008 12:06AM UAE / October 4. 2008 8:06PM GMT

DUBAI // The Atlantis hotel on Palm Jumeirah was swamped by visitors and plagued with complaints in its opening week, as staff turned away diners from packed restaurants and the taps ran dry in guest rooms.

At one point much of the hotel was without water for more than seven hours when the resort’s main water intake valve ruptured. Guests refused to check out of their rooms until they could shower and change, leaving hundreds of new arrivals stranded in the lobby.

“This is not a situation you want to be in when you are opening a resort of this size,” said Alan Leibman, the resort’s managing director.

The water problem, like the fire that caused an estimated Dh128 million (US$34.8m) worth of damage to the hotel’s lobby just weeks before it opened, was “just one of those things that happens”, he said. The two problems were unrelated.

“We have perhaps the finest development team in this country, and they are now looking at putting a second valve in there to prevent something like this happening again. You don’t want this. It was unexpected and it shouldn’t happen.”

By opening over the Eid al Fitr holiday, the hotel was overwhelmed with visitors. There were significant delays on the approach to the resort, while day visitors were turned away from restaurants to give priority to hotel guests.

However, Mr Leibman said, initial problems were being worked out and the huge number of people wanting to visit the Aquaventure water park, Lost Chambers aquarium and restaurants was a positive sign.

The aquarium had been expecting 350 daily outside guests – up to 500 on a busy day – and instead got more than 1,100.

“With Aquaventure, one of the things that has caused some pretty significant delays to people getting in is that it is just so popular. People want to come and try it out,” he said. “We’ve had two or three thousand calls coming into the resort every day to book restaurant reservations and find out about the hotel, and we are responding as quickly as possible to add more resources to make sure we can respond.”

Some visitors complained that service throughout the hotel was slow and inefficient, but Mr Leibman said things were improving.

“In a new resort this size there are going to be challenges,” he said. “We have a lot of new employees who are fantastic and friendly and they are getting better every day as they take care of servicing the guests.”

The hotel has offered a free room to anyone whose stay in the first few days was disrupted, but that may not be enough to tempt back some of them.

Writing on the website Journeyetc, a reviewer said his stay was a “nightmare from start to finish” and that it would be his last visit to the hotel.

“The staff are obviously very inexperienced at such a high profile location and most of them had no idea who to report to when identifying problems … all in all a bad experience for me,” he said.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest attractions at the Lost Chambers aquarium is in for an extended stay. The four-metre juvenile whale shark was captured by staff from Atlantis off the coast of Dubai. Although it was reported that the shark would only be kept until it had recovered from an unspecified medical problem, Mr Leibman said there were no plans to release it.

“I’m not sure where that statement came from,” he said. “We have probably the most talented marine science people in the industry monitoring it and making sure it is well.”

gmcclenaghan@thenational.ae