North Korea's Ryugyong Hotel Gets a New Lease On its "Doomed" Life

July 18, 2008 at 1:34 PM | 0 Comments

Quite possibly the worst hotel in the world is the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. This is not because the hotel is infested with bed bugs, or has crappy service, pay-for-WiFi or outrageous valet parking charges.

Nope, it's the worst hotel in the world because it has been abandoned for over 16 years with construction on the 105-storey pyramid-shaped hotel halted in 1992. It's never even hosted hotel guests. Oh yeah, and it's in North Korea.

Indeed, it's been dubbed "The Hotel of Doom" and the "Phantom Hotel." And if you think it doesn't look so bad, ugh. Check it in Google Earth.

The hotel consists of three wings rising at 75 degree angles capped by several floors arranged in rings supposed to hold five revolving restaurants and an observation deck. A creaky building crane has for years sat unused at the top of the 3,000-room hotel in a city where tourists are only occasionally allowed to visit.

Now an Egyptian firm, the Orascom group, has started to restore the top floors of the hotel. Glass panels have been installed as have telecommunications antennas, even though North Korea forbids its citizens to own cellphones. Orascom has even put up artist renderings of what the hotel's refurbishment will look like once completed.

The construction bill could top as high as $2 billion which is about 10 percent of North Korea's economic output. And we think actually getting guests to drop money here is going to be kind of difficult. Not that we're RevPar experts or anything but that all that communism and the nuclear weapons talk is a bit of a downer.

[Photo via Architecture MNP]

Tags: Ryugyong Hotel / North Korea Hotels

by juliana

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