FINALLY AFLOAT
Queen Elizabeth 2 set to reopen in Dubai after years threatened by financial meltdown,
Britain’s famed Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship will finally open as a floating luxury hotel moored off Dubai, nearly a decade after completing its last ocean voyage.
It’s been another long trip for the ship known as the QE2 to even open to the public, as Dubai’s financial meltdown and years of slow growth nearly sank the project and left the ship languishing at port. After initially planning to gut the vessel, Dubai’s government ultimately decided to restore the ship at a cost of over $100 million (U.S.), down to replicating its 1960s carpeting, with work still underway.
“It’s like walking into a time capsule — this is the ship in 1969. It’s a hotel and a museum,” said Hamza Mustafa, the CEO of Dubai’s Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corp.’s investment arm. “We’ve put in 2.7 million man hours working on her ... making sure that she can really shine.”
The luxury ship had decades of service, even as airlines came to dominate trans-Atlantic travel. It carried 2.5 million passengers and crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times.
In 2007, Cunard sold the QE2 to an arm of the state-run conglomerate Dubai World for 50 million pounds ($100 million U.S.). She arrived to Dubai’s Port Rashid the following year.
An economic crash left the QE2’s owners in debt for billions of dollars. Rumours circulated for years after that the ship could be sold. All the while, she sat mothballed at Port Rashid near Dubai’s historic downtown creek. Three years ago, the Dubai government’s Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corp. took over the project.
The ship has been hooked up to Dubai’s power grid, but still floats in the Persian Gulf.
Today, several of the QE2’s 13 decks are under operation, with 224 cabins available, Mustafa said. Prices will range from $150 $15,000 a night. By October, Mustafa said the hotel hopes to have a grand opening with “600 to 800 rooms” ready.
“If you want to come and have a sense of how it was during the ocean liner era but at the same time being a doorstep away from Dubai, this is the place you want to be,” he said. “We’re not a theme. We’re not a concept. This is what this ship was.”