QE2 Luxury Liner to Be One of Dubai’s Top Hotels

The famous ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2), is now sitting in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and will soon be a luxury hotel. However, plans for it to be completely refurbished have now been put on hold. Instead, the QE2 will be moored in one of Dubai’s more modest sections of town and many of the ship’s original fittings. Originally, plans had called for to be displayed at the city’s famous manmade palm-shaped island.

These plans were altered though due to some financial difficulties in Dubai back in 2008 that was suffered by Dubai World, which is the company that now owns the ship. The ship will still be used as a luxury hotel, but only 300 of the rooms will be refurnished while the remaining 700 will stay as they are.

The plans to dock the hotel at manmade island of Palm Jumeirah just didn’t work out according to the ship’s owners, who bought the vessel back in 2007 for the price of $100 million. The common areas of the luxury liner will also remain unchanged from their original state. This includes the entertainment areas as well as the restaurants.

At the moment, the QE2 is docked at Port Rashid, which is known as a working-class commercial port and is situated quite a distance from the Palm Jumeirah tourist area. And this is where the ocean liner will be staying for the foreseeable future.

The owners said they had a lot of exquisite ideas for the QE2 when they bought it and they wanted to completely renovate it. However, they found that the majority of people simply liked the famous ship the way it was and didn’t feel it needed to be given a facelift.

The vessel was originally launched over 40 years ago by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and it was operated by the Cunard Line from 1969 to 2008. Last year, the ship hosted a glamorous New Year’s Eve party, but since then it hasn’t really been used for much. In fact, local reports said the liner had been left abandoned. The owners said that’s not the case though, and they have approached three different hotel operators to see which one would be the most suitable for running the ship as a hotel.

Even though the QE2 will no longer be overhauled, Dubai plans to transform the Port Rashid area of town into a tourist center and will also be the home of a brand new maritime museum as well as the location of the ship. It’ expected that the conversion of the area will take about 18 months to complete and should be finished by the end of 2013.

In addition, Dubai World also plans to develop undersea luxury hotels in the near future with the first one being known as the World Discus Hotel. This structure will consist of a discus-shaped underwater building which will be connected to another discus which will be above the water. This is another of Dubai’s extravagant projects and will join the likes of its manmade islands, indoor ski slope, and the planet’s tallest tower.