And it's not just the beaches being earmarked for development. Dubai-based investor Emaar is spending US$2 billion on a ski resort in the High Atlas mountains at Oukaimeden. And with 2,000 hotel rooms, more than 300 retail units and 25,000m2 of business and conference facilities planned, Oukaimeden will be a year-round hive of activity. But anyone who has visited the High Atlas will probably be wondering exactly how Emaar will combine the two seemingly opposite worlds of the Berbers with that of conference facilities.
Switzerland's mountain-top beach
If Dubai can build ski runs in the scorching heat of its desert, then why can't a beach be recreated up a snow-crested mountain? That is the view of Samih Sawiris, the billionaire owner of the Egypt-based Orascom hotel group, who has announced that he is to fund a huge new resort at Andermatt, complete with swimming pool and artificial sandy beach. Construction starts next year on land formerly owned by the Swiss army and will also incorporate the ubiquitous 18-hole golf course (though few can have been built at such high altitude) and tropical spa complex. Five new hotels will offer at least 800 rooms and help create 2,000 new jobs in a town that has a population of 1,600 and has suffered an economic depression since the Swiss army vacated its training center near the town following the end of the cold war.
The beach will not be the only odd sight in the Alps. The US$140 million Matterhorn Glacier Paradise Project will see a 117m steel and glass pyramid built on top of the Klein Matterhorn, taking it to a height of 4,000m - which tourist chiefs hope will "make the mountain more attractive to visitors." But given that the Alps are currently one of climate change's proverbial coalmine canaries due to the region's fast-melting glaciers and disappearing snow lines, is this mountain range really the best place to spend billions of US dollars on new tourism infrastructure?
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