Saudi Arabia’s NEOM Backs US $350m 5-Star Hot Air Balloon Hotel Project – Nimbus
Main Photo: The outline plan!
Date: September 2022
Name: Nimbus
Location: UAE/Saudi Arabia – can move freely!
Number of Keys: TBA
Seller: Dreamed up by 4 students at Cornell – much beer involved!
Buyer: Saudi Arabia’s NEOM Tech & Digital Company, rebranded this week as Tonomus looking to back the concept
A proposed US$350 million five-star hotel in the form of a hot air balloon has won a contest backed by NEOM. Nimbus, conceived by a group of students at Cornell University, will fly above the skies of the giga-project as a self-contained hotel room costing $7,900 a night.
Nimbus was the winning project at this year’s Sustainable Hospitality Challenge, which saw more than 40 universities world-wide work on sustainable hospitality projects to present to NEOM chiefs.
As the winning project, the four students will be flown out to NEOM to analyse the site’s geography; meet the hotel development team; see potential development sites; and “hopefully bring Nimbus to reality”.
“Nimbus embodies this vision: A carbon-neutral operating model that offers authentic and thrilling excursions while protecting the very destinations we deliver visitors to, and leaving no footprints,” said the students during their presentation.
Flying above NEOM, the hot air balloon carries a luxury hotel room within a carbon fibre pod. This pod includes a sleeping area, dressing area, bathroom, foyer, lounge area, a service area for a pilot and potential butler, and an observation deck.
Nimbus runs on bio-propane and upon drone-assited landing, unfolds itself into a canopy-like eco-hotel.
“NEOM is all about remote, luxurious, sustainable experiences. Nimbus allows you to soar across NEOM within a luxury hotel room. Imagine, the beautiful sensation of just moving. In a private hot air balloon, you can admire the beautiful desert landscape below,” they said during the presentation.
In order to win, the students had to present their project at this year’s Future Hospitality Summit to a jury of hotel experts, along with the four other competing finalists.
The jury comprised Radisson’s Tim Cordon, Accor’s Marc Descrozaille, Kerten’s Marloes Knippenberg, Dimitris Manikis from Wyndham; IHG Hotels & Resorts’ Haitham Mattar; former Residor CEO Wolfgang Neumann; Hilton’s Jochem-Jan Sleiffer and Sandeep Walia from Marriott.
The four winning students were Devashish Sharma, Uddhav Prasad, Eddy Kohlmann C. and Eden Brachot.
Upon winning, Sharma told Hotelier Middle East: “I feel excited and exhilarated. It’s a lot of work and we’re excited to see where this goes. This is only the start. With the right guidance and with NEOM helping, it will take us three years to get the proper licensing.”
Brachot also said: “It took the team about 1,700 hours. It was a beautiful collaboration for us. This was a common passion between us all. It’s been so fun to nerd out about it. We’ve spoken to a few folks at NEOM already. I really do believe this will get off the ground, the physics work.”
Price: Investment required at this stage US$350m
Price Per Key: Wow!
THPT Comment: I take it the month is September and not April – i.e. this isn’t a college prank! with a selection panel as revered as the folks highlighted above, I guess not??? NEOM is both a Saudi company and a futuristic village
First Seen: Hotelier Middle East
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