Dubbed Barcelo Marrakech, the first hotel, due to open in April 2007, will have a capacity of 260 rooms. It will be situated some 13 km off the city of Marrakech, in the Palm Grove zone.
The Barcelo Mediterrania Saidia, with a capacity of 602 rooms, it is scheduled to open during the first quarter of 2008. In addition to Barcelo, the hotel will be partly owned by the Spanish real-estate group, Fadesa.
The two units bring Barcelo’s hotels in Morocco to three after the opening of a hotel in Casablanca last March.
Barcelo's website claims that the company believes - "...that we have a greater responsibility, including social and environmental aspects. Therefore, Barceló Hotels & Resorts has explicitly confirmed its commitment to society and the environment by signing the United Nations Pact on Human Rights and the Environment.
As the Pact requires, we do not discriminate in employment, we respect our employees' freedom to form associations, we promote environmental responsibility and we apply environmental-friendly technologies.
With a view to pools...
Meanwhile, despite the reservations of some Moroccans about rooftop pools and scantily clad sunbathers, the latest townhouses on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast are going ahead with pools.
Rooftop pools and glass walls are among among the features in townhouses to be built on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast by Property Logic, the Spanish developer of Le Jardin de Fleur, a new scheme close to the marina, beach and shopping areas within the Mediterrania-Saidia golf and beach resort.
The resort is one of six forming part of the Plan d’Azur backed by the country’s King Mohammed VI and the Moroccan Government in a bid to increase the annual number of tourists visiting the country from two million to ten million by 2010.
The design of the 50 new homes, set in landscaped sub-tropical gardens, ‘breaks the mould’ of property designs at Mediterrania-Saidia, according to Gerry Jones, joint managing director of Newbury-based Saffron Villas Ltd which is marketing the luxury air-conditioned properties in the UK and Ireland.
“The architect has combined typically Moroccan features with a modern slant which includes a glass wall between the spacious master bedroom and its ensuite bathroom,” she reports. “In my view they are the ultimate in affordable luxury.”
The three-bedroom, three-bathroom homes, built around a communal pool with its own beach, are available in a choice of three layouts with floor areas ranging from 169 sq m to 189 sq m.
Each of the fully furnished properties comes with a rooftop pool with a panoramic view embracing the sea, the marina, the resort’s golf courses and the Rif mountains which separate the Mediterranean from the Sahara. However locals who may be employed are concerned about being exposed to semi-clad sunbathers.
Outside the overflow from the rooftop pool creates what Gerry describes as “a spectacular water cascade.”
And today also comes the news that Mandarin Oriental International Ltd, which manages luxury hotels in Asia, Europe and the Americas, says it will run a new 145-room resort near Marrakech, Morocco scheduled to open in 2009.The Mandarin Oriental Jnan Rahma is being developed by Moroccan company JK Hotels on a 131 acre site in the Palmeraie region in the Atlas Mountains, Mandarin said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
The Marrakech hotel is one of five Mandarin hotels scheduled to open in 2009, along with Dallas, Chicago, Las Vegas and its second hotel in Macau.
The company will have more than 9,000 rooms under management the end of that year, it said. Mandarin also manages the Elbow Beach Hotel in Bermuda. Mandarin Oriental, a unit of Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd., is based in Hong Kong, incorporated in Bermuda and has its shares traded in London and Singapore.
Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
1 comment:
Morrocco is the most beautiful, its the biggest the wealthiest country to me personally in the world! A lot of my family is from there and with spanish hotels under going production then that alone is a great advancemnet!
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