Bawadi, is Dubai’s Strip. It will be 10kms long, with 31 hotels and 29,200 rooms and when finished in 2016 it will be the longest hotel development in the world, eclipsing even the famous Las Vegas Strip.
The centrepiece will be the world’s largest hotel Asia Asia (currently it is the MGM in Vegas) which alone will provide 6.500 rooms, combining 5.100 four-star and an additional 1,400 five-star rooms.
Bawadi, the infrastructure work on which is now on, will consist of a series of themed-based luxury hotels such as the Desert Gate Hotel and Tower, the Wahat Al Kuttab Hotel, the Desert Beach Resort and Hotel, the Land of Arabia Hotel and Resort, the Wild Wild West Hotel, the Africa World Hotel, The Europe Hotel and Resort, the Pirates Cove Hotel and Resort and now a new addition has been made to the 10km stretch on the Bawadi Boulevard with the Dh1.2 billion, 1,000-room Palaces Hotel and Resort by Galadari Investments. Golden Leaves Hotel and Resorts has also announced plans to develop the Ottoman Palace Hotel and Resort that will replicate the Ottoman era.
Bawadi will represent the largest concentration of hotels in the world and make it home 24 per cent of hotel rooms in Dubai. It promises to become the world’s most exciting entertainment and leisure hubs that will cater to a wide variety of needs and tastes of tourist flocking to Dubai. There will be over 100 theatres, 1,500 restaurants, the best in sporting events and live theatrical and streets shows.
The Bawadi project will be built in five distinct phases to scale with the growth of the toruism inflow into this city that walks the walk, and talks the walk. To begin with, five luxury hotels will open their doors by 2010, adding 9,500 more hotel rooms, with another six a year later, seven in 2013 and six more hotels in 2014.
Seven years down the line, the Bawadi Strip will take the total number of hotel rooms now available from 84,224 to 120, 424, enough to draw more than the 3.3 million tourists expected to drop in and stay an average of four nights.