By Ed Attwood www.arabianbusiness.com
Saudi Arabia will help China build a $1.3bn luxury hotel modelled on Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, according to newspaper reports from Beijing.
The People’s Daily Online quoted a senior official as saying that graphics and planning of the ‘seven-star’ hotel had already been completed.
The announcement was made at a press conference on Wednesday.
Wang Hongzhong, chief official of the Mentougou district, where the project is based, said that it had been designed as a “streamlined building like the Khalifa Tower in Dubai”.
The hotel will be situated at the end of Chang An avenue, which runs across the Chinese capital’s Tiananmen Square.
No further details about Saudi Arabia’s role in the project, or a potential completion date, were provided.
The Burj Khalifa, at 828m the tallest building in the world, was opened in Dubai in January last year. It anchors the 500-acre Downtown Dubai master-planned community developed by Emaar.
The cost of the project was around $1.5bn
