Inside a £1.6 billion ‘tower of doom’ hotel that has NEVER had a single guest
- Located in Pyongyang, the Ryugyong Hotel was said to have opened more than 25 years ago
This hotel has never had a single guest, despite costing a whopping £1.6 billion to build.
Located in the North Korean capital Pyongyang, the Ryugyong Hotel was intended to welcome its first guests more than 25 years ago.
The hotel has been compared to ‘Mordor’ due to its pyramid-shaped structure and its location in one of the most impoverished countries in the world.
Construction of the hotel initially began in 1987 and had it been completed on schedule two years later, it would have opened as the tallest hotel in the world.
The Ryungyong Hotel in North Korea is the world’s tallest vacant building with 105 empty floors
The hotel has been compared to ‘Mordor’ due to its pyramid-shaped structure and its location in one of the most impoverished countries in the world.
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Now it has the more undesirable reputation of being the tallest vacant building in the world.
3,000 rooms would be built in the hotel, spreading them across the three-winged building.
However, work on the hotel was halted in 1992 as North Korea experienced an economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union that year.
After a sixteen-year hiatus, an Egyptian contractor, the Orascom group, took over the project and revived construction in 2008. Reuters.
After the extended hiatus in further development of the hotel, exterior glass panels were installed in July 2011.
This development led to reassurance from North Korean officials that the hotel would eventually open in 2012 – which was pushed back to 2013 after another postponement.
During this period, German luxury hotel group Kempinski was to oversee the management of the site, but withdrew just months after taking over, stating that it was “currently not possible” to have a presence in the North Korean market at the time.
Of course, hopes that the hotel would eventually open in some capacity did not materialize, as the hotel is said to be completely empty inside to this day.