Environment

Chilling developments in Dubai

by LotusFlower | December 19, 2008 at 08:30 am

392 views | 45 Recommendations | 8 comments

Dubai is a place of excess not in terms of alcohol, drugs and sex but in terms of cost to the environment it must be up there with the worst.

As new hotels and pleasuredomes of merchandise are built so the excess carbon footprint grows.

Some of the latest innovations at the all new Palazzo Versace Hotel include refrigerated swimming pools and sandy beaches that have the hot air sucked out of them so that they are more comfortable to walk on.

Of course such luxury will not be available to the thousands of exploited im migrant workers used to build these constructions who live in squalid conditions and earn very little indeed.

More on the Sand Technology at NP.

This week, it was reported that the Palazzo Versace hotel - the Emirate's latest offering for those still in the market for exorbitant luxury - will boast, when completed in 2010, a refrigerated 820sq metre swimming pool and a beach with artificially cooled sand to protect its guests from the excesses of a climate that can see summer temperatures exceeding 50C. Wind machines will even be on hand to provide a gentle breeze.

"We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on," said Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, a hotel group with plans for a further 15 luxury hotels around the world to add to the one that already exists on Australia's Gold Coast. (I'm a Celebrity junkies will know this as the hotel where the celebrities are sent once voted out of the "jungle".) "This is the kind of luxury that top people want," he added.

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Paschen

at 08:40 on December 19th, 2008

Interesting and yet Dubai is using the latest and top notch environmental technologies.

LotusFlower

at 08:48 on December 19th, 2008

Hi Paschen - well yes it does - it has everything :-) including the snow domes and golf courses the refrigerated swimming pools and cooled sand... which when set in juxtaposition with the squalid conditions that exploited immigrant workers have to endure make it not the greatest of environments perhaps Thanks for the flag! :-)

Paschen

at 08:53 on December 19th, 2008

Good point in deed, I forgot about those and was thinking more along the lines of waste mgm and energy supply.

Rachel Nixon

at 10:03 on December 19th, 2008

Astonishing the lengths hotels will go to to provide ever more "luxury".

Dubai seems like a place full of contradictions.

Amy Judd

at 12:19 on December 19th, 2008

I did a bit on this a few days ago, but thanks for taking the story forward!

car1edb

at 14:13 on December 19th, 2008

That place is so unsustainable on so many levels. And the way they're oil is tightly tied to the dollar, there will be a lot of empty hotels and empty pockets to boot in the near future.