By Dana Halawi
Daily Star staff
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
BEIRUT: Beirut became the first Middle Eastern capital to boast a Campbell Gray contemporary luxury hotel which, as the owner puts it, is as stylish as the city itself. “I came to Beirut four-and-half-years-ago when Solidere was restored and I couldn’t believe it is the same city I visited 12 years ago when it was bombed out,” hotelier Gordon Gray told The Daily Star.
“I love the city and I believe it is ready for renaissance, so I thought let’s give Beirut a real sexy hotel.”
Gray is also the owner of the luxurious One Aldwych and Dukes hotels in London, and Carlisle Bay in Antigua.
Le Gray is located in the historic heart of Downtown Beirut, a 15-minute drive from Rafik Hariri International Airport, in the smart Beirut Central District. It offers cool, modern interiors, with 87 wonderfully spacious rooms and sensational suites, exciting restaurants, all accompanied by warm and highly professional service.
“When I got involved in the project the building was being designed but not yet built and I thought it was a great area. When, as a visitor, you arrive to a city I think the key is to be able to walk and reach everything easily and not always take a taxi,” he said.
The hotel is characterized by its collection of 500 works of contemporary abstract art, which Gray spent four years collecting from Cuba, Beirut, Damascus, Paris and London.
“I think most hotels don’t pay much attention to art but this is one of my passions,” Gray said, adding: “People have been stopping me in the lobby to tell me it is a masterpiece and I am overwhelmed.”
Gray feels very optimistic about his new boutique hotel and believes that it will draw many visitors to Beirut.
“Internationally we’re quite famous and there is a lot more press interested in this hotel than any other project I’ve done,” he added.
“When I said four years ago that I was doing a hotel in Beirut they used to be surprised, but the perception now has changed. My friends think that Beirut is dangerous but I believe that Beirut is the safest place in the world,” he said.
He added that tourists will feel safer to come to Lebanon when foreigners and not only Lebanese invest in the country.
Gray expects a high occupancy rate in his hotel even with the room rates ranging between $380 and $1,650 per night.
“I don’t think that our rates are high at all because I was paying a huge amount in other hotels in Beirut,” he said.
Hotel occupancy in Beirut improved considerably this year: a mirror image of the lively tourism activity witnessed in the country this summer. The occupancy rates in Lebanon’s hotels reached an average of 90 percent during the first six months of 2009, said head of Lebanon’s hoteliers’ association Pierre Ashkar.
Le Gray is the first in a brace of hotels preparing to open in the Lebanese capital: the Four Seasons Hotel is expected to open before the end of the year; the Summerland Kempinski hotel and resort is under construction at the location of the old Summerland Hotel at a cost of $200 million; and excavation has begun at the site of the new Grand Hyatt hotel which is to open in two years.
“We’re planning to construct two more hotels by the sea in Lebanon very soon but we still want to confirm the land. We’re also keen on doing something in the mountains,” said Gray.
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