Yes and no. It's true that a 6,500-room hotel is planned for the Middle East. But it's not true that the MGM Grand is adding another 2,000 rooms.
The largest hotel in the world is on the drawing board for the United Arab Emirates. This little country, about the size of the state of Indiana and awash in oil money, announced plans earlier this month to create a $27 billion "hospitality district" called Bawadi, just outside the capital city of Dubai. (For an artist's rendition of the "Bawadi Strip," click on this link: www.fahad.com/pics/dubai_bawadi_lrg.jpg.)
The Bawadi district, when completed in 2016, will have a total of nearly 30,000 hotel rooms in 31 hotels, many of which will be four- and five-star properties. Themed hotels will depict Hollywood-Bollywood, Europe, America, Africa, Persia, Amazonia, and the Wild Wild West. The completion of the first phase of the project will unveil its centerpiece: the 6,500-room Asia-Asia Hotel, with 1,400 five-star and 5,100 four-star rooms and suites. Five more luxury hotels will open in conjuction with the Asia-Asia; another six will debut in 2011. Seven hotels will be completed by 2012, seven more in 2013, and the final six in 2014.
The development will also house upwards of 150 restaurants, entertainment centers, shopping malls, theaters, and convention centers. An air-conditioned sky train will transport people up and down the Strip.
In response to the Bawadi announcement, according to a statement by an MGM Grand spokesperson in the Las Vegas Sun, the designation of the largest hotel in the world "isn't a perch we're trying to stay on." Which means the current largest hotel in the world (probably) won't expand to retain the designation after Asia-Asia opens (if it ever does).
