ABU DHABI // Super rich and nowhere to go? Why not try the most expensive holiday on the planet - a weeklong stay at the seven-star Emirates Palace hotel for US$1 million (Dh3.67 million)? The all-inclusive, $145,000-a-day getaway package for two includes gifts of guns and jewellery and day trips to Jordan, Bahrain and Iran.
It is the brainchild of Karim Sehry Fassy, the director of marketing at the Emirates Palace. "No one has bought it yet. We're waiting for the lucky winner," Mr Fassy said. He is looking to the new Russian super-rich to provide the first taker. In addition to the holiday, Mr Fassy said the trip would bring publicity for the vacationer and his guest. "We are sure there will be someone who wants to use it as a kind of advertising," he said. "If someone goes out and buys a necklace for $1 million, no one is going to write about him in the newspaper.
"I got this idea for a holiday when I was asking myself, 'What would I do with $1 million'." The package includes the hotel's finest suite, first-class air tickets, a full-time Maybach luxury saloon with driver, daily spa treatments, day trips by private jet to Iran to witness the creation of a unique Persian carpet, to Jordan for a spa treatment with Dead Sea mud and to Bahrain for a deep-sea pearl dive. The pearl will be set in a custom-made piece of jewellery.
"The important thing to remember is that the trip is adaptable. If a person doesn't want to go to Bahrain, or would rather ski for example, we'll arrange a trip to Beirut or Iran," he said. The guests will receive gifts worth more than $100,000 - including a pearl necklace for her and a gun from the English gunsmith Holland & Holland for him. Gavin Samson, the director of Tri-Hospitality consulting, a company based in London and Dubai, said the super package would probably find a buyer.
"Nothing surprises me any more at all in this market," he said. "I'm surprised that this is in Abu Dhabi and not in Dubai. That's where the publicity and the headlines are hit with these ridiculous announcements." Mr Samson said the package was unprecedented, but he noted that celebrities and public figures willing to spend so much on a holiday were the kind of people hostile to such publicity. "It seems ridiculously expensive. Anyone who would do it would be doing it for the publicity," he said, adding that the quest to be bigger, better and more expensive could get ridiculous. "But knowing the Gulf, the money is there and there's someone who will want to do it."
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