Baghdad hotel that housed media gets makeover

Famous the world over for housing masses of foreign journalists during the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Palestine Hotel has since undergone a makeover and looks brand-new. Now all it needs are customers.

From employees cleaning dust off the faux marble to guards waiting to guide visitors through a metal detector, the 18-story property's two-year face-lift has seen it talking a "big game" since it reopened last year.

"We are a five-star establishment," hotel manager Fadhel Salman Hassan proudly said. "We have 405 rooms, three bars."

As a sign of the majority government-owned hotel's clout in a city with frequent power outages, he added "By order of the minister of electricity, the power never cuts."

On the ground floor, Dhafer Thair Nuri and his fiancee, Saja Ali Hashim, viewed a vast reception hall, where they were going to hold a large event for friends and relatives.

"The managers saw that we are a young couple looking to start our lives," the fiancee said. "They gave us a good price."

Hassan, the hotel manager, boasted, "This is not a hotel - it is a tourist complex."

Customers needed

Once filled to the brim with foreign journalists, the Palestine's rates now start at $200 a night, and visitors can also enjoy cocktails at the panoramic 18th-floor bar, where most drinks cost $15 or more.

But despite its best efforts, the hotel is still struggling to attract customers, and has an occupancy rate of only 35 percent, according to Hassan.

As a result, employees wait idle in hallways and lobbies, testimony to Baghdad's struggle in attracting a business clientele, to say nothing of deep-pocketed tourists.

"Iraq is safe," Hassan said. "You can walk down the street safely."

Violence has indeed fallen from its peaks in 2006 and 2007, when Iraq was embroiled in a brutal sectarian war, but hundreds of Iraqis are still killed every month in attacks, many of them in Baghdad.

The Palestine was built in 1982, in the early years of Saddam Hussein's rule, and was managed by the Le Meridien group. The chain pulled out, however, after crushing sanctions were imposed on Iraq following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The hotel rose to international prominence a decade ago, during the invasion of Iraq.

"This was where foreign journalists stayed," said Patrick Forestier, a reporter for French weekly Paris Match, who stayed in the hotel throughout March and April 2003, as foreign troops were taking control of the country.

"I saw the first American tanks on the streets of Baghdad" on April 8, 2003, he recalled. In front of the Palestine, "people were applauding, but they were amazed. They could not imagine that the Americans were so close to Baghdad."

The following day, Forestier was again at the forefront of international attention, as a group of Iraqis, aided by US forces, famously pulled down a statue of Saddam in Firdos Square, directly outside the Palestine.

War scars

But along with being a viewpoint for journalists to watch the invasion progress, the Palestine suffered its own wounds from the violence. On April 8, 2003, a shell fired by a US tank crashed into the hotel.

"I felt everything shaking, and I lost consciousness," said Faleh Kheiber, who was a Reuters photographer at the time, and was on a balcony on the 15th floor of the hotel when the shell hit. Kheiber was left badly wounded.

"The last thing I remember is being blinded, but I managed to take some photos before falling down."

Agence France-Presse

(China Daily 03/20/2013 page10)