In October 2019, North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un visited Hotel Haegumgang and ordered the demolition of the world’s first floating hotel docked in North Korea.
This floating hotel was designed in Sweden, built in Singapore, and originally made for Australia, and then moved to Vietnam, which is currently owned by a South Korean company that bought it from a Japanese company.
The hotel has travelled over 14000 km around the world and experienced cyclones, fire, WW2 ammunition, and murder. This all may sound confusing to you…
So let’s start the journey of this unfortunate floating hotel.
Story of the World’s First Floating Hotel
In the 1980s, Doug Tarca, the town developer of Townsville, and his son Peter Tarca wanted something innovative and remarkable to attract tourists to their city. Townsville is a city in Queensland State of Australia located near the famous Great Barrier Reef.
Hailed as a natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system and a very popular tourist destination. The unparalleled beauty of life under the seawater brings millions of tourists from around the world to this region.
The original plan of Doug Tarca was to permanently anchor three cruise ships along the city coast and to build a safe anchorage on the reef, but this plan was later rejected as being too unreasonable.
Then they came up with another ‘brilliant’ and revolutionary idea that they would build the world’s first floating hotel, which is also known as floatel in today’s time.
I know what you’re thinking, we already have floating hotels, they’re called ‘cruise ships’ and they’ve been around for centuries.
But Doug Tarca didn’t want a ship; he wanted a hotel that would float in the endless sea over the John Brewer Reef. Doug believed that you could tell the difference when you see one.
This floating hotel would be a gigantic, seven-story high, 90 meters long, and its width would be shorter than that of a typical cruise ship. It would be paradise in the sea.
Unlike a ship, it would not propel on its own, rather it would sit still on the seawater and could occasionally be moved from one place to another using a carrier ship.
A Swedish company designed the floating hotel and the construction of this innovative building began in a Singapore Company that built offshore living quarters at oil rigs.
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The hotel building costs came with a heavy price tag, estimated to be up to 20 million USD, adjusted for inflation around $42 million in 2020.
Upon completion, the innovative hotel was carried all the way from Singapore to Australia for its grand opening. A massive heavy-lift ship towed the hotel more than 4,000 kilometers to its destination off the Australian coast. After arriving, it was connected to several anchors to stop it from floating away.
The hotel was named “Four Seasons Barrier Reef Resort” after the names of two stakeholders “Four seasons” and the “Great Barrier Reef Holdings Ltd.”
The hotel sat over the John Brewer Reef, in the open sea, and some 43.5 miles off the coast of Townsville. From a distance, it appeared like a seven-story building resting on endless seawater.
As you come closer, you could see that the Hotel was much more than just a giant building,
it was a world-first effort to have people staying on the reef in a floating hotel.
The Hotel Building was adorned with all of the typical in-hotel luxuries, including 200 lavishly furnished rooms, along with glowing neon night club, discos, bars, a library, a gym, a 100-seat theatre, a sauna, a conference center for business, a 50 seat underwater observatory, and a helipad.
Do you want to play tennis on the surface of the ocean? The hotel also has a floating tennis court.
Want to do fancy swimming in freshwater while surrounded by the endless seawater? The floatel also has a freshwater swimming pool.
The hotel was a perfect place for diving, fishing, and an underwater journey for discoveries. Visitors could also immerse themselves in underwater adventures with the help of the hotel’s submarine.
Other fish-spotting opportunities came in many forms. Visitors could jump straight from a platform into the sea for a casual mid-ocean swim, while glass-bottomed boats allowed for low-stress views of the ocean’s residents.
The hotel also had an underwater viewing area where guests could feast their eyes on fish without ever leaving the hotel.
The hotel was circled by colorful coral, which the region is famous for other creatures and critters in the area including giant clams, blue starfish, reef
sharks, and a whole range of fish.
For those interested in tasting the appetizing delights of the seven seas, there
were two restaurants in the Hotel with plenty of fish on the menu. Diners had
the chance of tasting some of the freshest fish around.
From its appearance, the hotel was one of the best things that happened to coral Reef tourism in the area… but on papers only.
In reality, the hotel was actually a disaster, to say the least. The Great Barrier Reef Resort looked good on paper but it had gotten into hot waters right from the start.
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First, a contract dispute with the Singapore shipbuilder, due to which it got delayed the delivery of the hotel for over 6 months and when it finally arrived in Australia, Mother Nature intervened and Cyclone struck, buffeting the seven-story luxury hotel with sixty-two mile-an-hour winds.
Due to this, multiple amenities were damaged like the swimming pool, the underwater observatory, and the guest transfer shuttle boat.
These damages were minor but the hotel couldn’t be opened until March of 1988.
Because of the hindrance, it cost the owners millions of dollars in lost revenue and canceled tickets as the hotel missed the profitable Northern Hemisphere winter tourist market.
With reduced prices and the hype around the novel concept of a floating paradise, the hotel opened in 1988 with a good 85% occupancy.
Even then, all of these unusual attractions came at a hefty fee – one night in the hotel could cost anywhere from $550 to $1100 per room.
A major reason for the high prices was the unusually high maintenance cost of the hotel. A typical cruise ship travels from one place to another exploiting local laws and loopholes to keep the operating cost low; this wasn’t possible in the case of the floating hotel.
Situated in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, this hotel had to measure up to strict environmental
standards to protect sea life surrounding the complex.
There was no toxic paint on the hull and no waste was released into the surrounding water. Instead, all sewage and liquid waste were treated before then being discarded many miles outside the reef.
Trash was all burned before being moved to the mainland. The hotel even had a water-tight compartment housed sewage-treatment machinery, incinerators, diesel generators, a huge air conditioning system, a desalination plant that could produce up to 152 tons of fresh water a day, and a repair shop.
The repair shop was so competent that it can repair anything from generators to handbags. The Floating hotel even had a laboratory where marine researchers studied sea-bird dropping to become certain that the hotel wasn’t feeding scraps to local birds.
Because of these events, the hotel was thought to be completely unharmful to the environment surrounding it.
The hotel was anchored 43.5 miles away from the coast of Townsville and the only way to reach the hotel was through water taxis, which would carry ferry guestsfrom the shore all the way to this grand hotel. On this journey, it would take 90 minutes and cost $120.
On the other hand, richer guests could take the quicker and more luxurious 20-minute helicopter jaunt that cost $325. But rough weather often disrupts these journeys.
If high winds or bad weather struck, it would become complicated for the boats and helicopters to undertake their trips.
Visitors would often cancel their tours because of bad weather and even those who could make it, complained about high turbulence and sea-sickness. In August of 1988, one of the taxis caught fire and the passengers were seriously injured.
It was also a little strange that the main selling point of the hotel was the coral reef site as in the preceding five years, 90 to 95% of the coral in John Brewer Reef was already gobbled up.
Two invasions of the Crown of Thorns starfish had eaten up the vast majority of the coral. Also, the guests who didn’t do scuba diving and snorkeling often complained about the lack of live entertainment in the floating hotel.
The widely marketed swimming pool was long gone in a cyclone attack. The final nail in the coffin came in the form of World War 2 ammunition.
In September 1988, some scuba-diving guests found 100 tons of World War II ammunition, including artillery rounds and anti-tank missiles, only 3 kilometers away from the Hotel.
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The Navy investigated and claimed that the ammunition was just far enough away to not pose a threat. In fact, until around 1950, it was legal to dump live ammunition offshore.
Such news put a permanent dent in the reputation of the resort… who would like to spend their vacation floating over a huge arsenal of WW2 ammunition?
To hold visitors, the hotel reduced prices to even further – only $130 per night for a double room.
The enterprise also suffered from a bitter feud between owners and the operators, hapless marketing, poor management, and ultimately, bookings began to dry up.
During the final few months, the hotel registered only 20 to 25% occupancy. Due to this loss of money, the floating hotel needed to flow in more affordable waters.
The hotel owners sold the hotel to a Japanese company in 1989 only a year after the hotel had opened its doors in Australia.
These new owners floated off the hotel to Ho Chi Minh City, in the south of Vietnam.
At that time, Vietnam was experiencing a post-war tourism boom, Ho Chi Minh City was flooded with foreign visitors but the city did not have many high-class accommodations for rich people.
As an already packaged, ready-to-go facility, the floating hotel looked perfect, so the new owners were willing to take the risk.
The journey from its Australian port to Ho Chi Minh City was another epic adventure of over 5,000 kilometers.
Upon its arrival, the hotel was moored in the Saigon River near the Tran Hung Dao Statue, and renovated to give local look, and renamed ‘Saigon Floating Hotel’. The hotel was ready for its second life.
In Vietnam, Saigon floating hotel became famous rapidly. It was the golden era for the floating hotel. It became the face of Vietnam tourism.
The country’s first foreign-invested hotel offered a range of luxurious facilities, services, and 400 highly trained staff.
In 1995, the Hotel charged up to 335 USD per room per night in a country where the average person makes less than 350 USD a year.
In its stay of more than 9 years, the Saigon Floating Hotel became a widely famous icon of the rise of tourism in Vietnam. Locals lovingly called the hotel ‘The Floater’.
However, its appeal began to wither in 1997 when Vietnam’s existing hotels were
renovated and many other foreign companies joined the lucrative market.
Once more, the hotel owners decided to uproot. And they sold the hotel to South Korean Asan, the tourism arm of Hyundai, who again decided to move elsewhere in an attempt to pick up profits.
This time, the hotel set sail to a strange location in North Korea and renamed “Hotel Haegumgang”. The world’s first floating hotel was anchored at Mount Kumgang Tourist Region near the heavily guarded DMZ border, which opened in 1998 as a North-South experiment in tourism.
It was the symbol for the cooperation of the North and South Korea, in the shadow of the ‘Diamond Mountain’.
At that time, relations between North Korea and South Korea were improving. It was hoped that the hotel might draw some tourists from South Korea, and help to ease these relations even further.
Between 1998 and 2008, the floating hotel was the official venue for the emotional reunion of families divided by the 1950-53 Korean War, where families of North and South Korea can get together, in which many of them had not seen their loved ones for over six decades.
But in 2008, yet another bad hand was dealt for the aging vessel when a South Korean tourist accidentally went to a militarized zone and a North Korean soldier shot and killed a South Korean tourist at the resort. Seoul quickly ceased all tours in that area.
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Since then, the floating hotel has been mysteriously silent and resting at the North Korea resort without maintenance. However, it is still open to local tourists.
In 2018, North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in decided to reopen the floating hotel.
But in 2019, Kim Jong-un visited the site and criticized the facilities. He claimed that the facilities were “not only very backward in terms of architecture but look so shabby as they are not properly cared for. The buildings are just a hotchpotch with no national character at all.”
He went on to say that the “unpleasant-looking facilities” should be removed and rebuilt to “meet [North Korea’s] own sentiment and aesthetic taste”. That has yet to happen.
The hotel is still in North Korea, in Kumgang Port. So, that was the tragic story of the world’s first floating hotel. I believe you could say they struggled to keep things a ‘float’.
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