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Future Perfect

Published: 01/02/2006 - Filed under: Archive » 2006 » February 2006 » Destinations » Features » Destinations » Middle East and Africa »

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The island kingdom of Bahrain is undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its history to become an upmarket tourist destination as well as financial centre. Tom Otley reports

Understandably, no one in the Kingdom is keen to admit that Bahrain is playing catch-up with Dubai, but that's the impression you get. Regular visitors to Dubai will recognise the construction and the giant hoardings with computer generated visualisations of new projects. The pace might be slower than frenetic Dubai, the scale much smaller, but there's no doubt that Bahrain has big plans for the future.

Until recently, Bahrain didn't need to play catch-up with anyone. Historically it has stood alone. When the other Trucial States (as the Gulf Emirates were known pre-1970) decided to club together to form the United Arab Emirates, along with Oman it stayed away. It could afford to. Oil was discovered in the 1930s, and it was as early as the 1960s that its economic diversification strategy ensured that education, healthcare and telecommunications were strong, resulting in a reputation for key financial services.

Bahrain still plays on this reputation. It was a founding member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is a full member of the United Nations, the Arab League, World Bank, IMF, Geneva Convention and, of course, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It is also home to the US Navy's Fifth fleet.

Perhaps it was this pre-eminence that allowed the then-Emirate to take a relaxed view of its ambitious neighbour, Dubai. Let Dubai become a tourism destination, what did it matter when Bahrain had such a reputation as a financial centre? Except of course, Dubai does not want just tourism, it wants to be everything: a hub for flights, a sporting centre, a financial and media centre and a major trading hub. Consequently, a reluctant Bahrain has raised its game.

As well as the projects being undertaken to underline Bahrain's position as a financial centre (see box) several new developments make it clear how things are going to change for Bahrain. The Al Areen Desert Spa & Resort is a US$750 million project by the Bahrain-based Gulf Finance House BSC (GFH). Intended to promote Bahrain as a leading tourist hub, the resort will include the Oasis Spa with two VIP towers housing a range of specialised alternative medical therapeutic services, and a US$140 million Banyan Tree Desert Spa and Resort, which opens later this year. The all-villa private pool Banyan Tree is promising some of the finest spa facilities in the Middle East, with a total area of 9,500sqm and its own hydrotherapy circuit complete with an igloo. The pools, which measure 150sqm for the indoor and 450sqm for the outdoor, compensate for the lack of a beach location. And its exclusivity, with only 74 villas, makes it a tempting prospect – albeit one that will open too late for this year's first big event: the opening race of the F1 season. This takes place from March 10-12 this year at the Sakhir Circuit, which is a 25-minute drive south from Manama city centre and a 35-minute drive from the Bahrain International Airport.

Other tourism plans include several five-star hotel openings, including a rumoured second Ritz-Carlton on reclaimed land adjoining the first, and a Four Seasons hotel in Bahrain Bay, on one of two newly created islands connected to Manama by a bridge and scheduled to open in 2008. This US$1.5 billion residential, business and shopping development on the Manama waterfront is being created by Bahrain Bay Development, a joint venture between Arcapita Bank and a Bahrain-based investment group.

That tourism should be such a target is not surprising. On the face of it, Bahrain has just as much to recommend it as Dubai.

Just like Dubai, most new resorts are being built on reclaimed land, since beaches and a sea view are all important. Indeed, the one outstanding resort in Bahrain that is already open follows that pattern, with its own island connected to the main resort by a causeway. The Ritz-Carlton Bahrain Sports Club

& Spa (formerly Le Meridien) has just undergone a renovation of its club rooms and club floor and, with its 23 villas and new spa, is in the enviable position of being able to welcome the new competition in the hope it will expand that end of the leisure market. The resort opened in 1992 – Ritz-Carlton took over the management in 2002 – and the gradual improvements have ensured it has remained at the centre of the island's social life.

The latest renovation is by French interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon, also responsible for the Four Seasons George V in Paris. For business travellers, the club rooms are a welcome addition, with sizes ranging from 31sqm to 152sqm and views of either the Arabian Gulf or the Manama cityscape.

Rooms are now impressively modern, with rare Rio Rosewood furniture, reconstituted "Santa Margarita" beige marble from Italy in the bathrooms, a rain shower and a mirror-embedded plasma TV for amusement during long soaks in the freestanding bath. For company you can stroll along to the newly refurbished club lounge and relax in original pieces from Knoll, Ligne Rosset, Fritz Hansen, then stare up at the Baccarat crystal chandelier.

All of this is admirably new and fashionable, but when you meet with those now living and working in Bahrain, what is most striking is that much of their social life seems to revolve around some aspect of the Ritz-Carlton. In part this might be because it was for so long the only five-star resort on the island, but it is also because of the spa and sports club, whose local membership of some 5,000 is enough to support regular classes (spinning, yoga, aqua-aerobics and even a Saturday morning weights workout).

The resort also has an impressive range of restaurants. In fact, when an expat kindly listed the top 10 restaurants in Bahrain, three of them – Plums, Primavera and Trader Vics – were at the hotel.

As well as these three, there's the buffet-style La Mediteranee, which serves everything from pasta with a sauce of your choice to lamb chops; and Nirvana, notable not so much for being the only Indian restaurant in the Ritz-Carlton group, but for being an excellent and well thought-out addition to the restaurants on the island.

At Trader Vics, Asian-style meals can be billed to your room. This brand is not unique to Bahrain or to Ritz-Carlton; there are famous examples in Hilton and Intercontinental properties. But its location just a few metres from the beach, set on a wooden platform surrounded by ponds and fountains, is impressive. There's a huge selection of cocktails, many of which trade on that sense of history that regular business travellers enjoy. The Suffering Bastard – a mix of rums, lime and liqueurs – is apparently from a recipe at Shepherd's hotel in Cairo. It lived up to its name by being extremely unpleasant to drink.

It will be the new villas at the Ritz-Carlton that will have to fight off competition from new openings such as the Banyan Tree. They are as luxurious as you would expect from the five-star end of leisure in the Gulf: three bedrooms, all ensuite, with the master bathroom containing an infinity/spa bath, a huge L-shaped plunge pool and a private beach (shared with the other villas).

The standard of accommodation is important in Bahrain – not just because, in summer, retreating to the air conditioning of your room can become a thing of habit, but because as yet, there isn't a huge amount to do in Bahrain. Once you've visited the huge mosque and wandered around the gold souk, there are mainly malls to occupy your time. We visited in winter when the temperature was a pleasant 20-26 degrees, and were surprised to see there was some variation in the weather; there was even fog one day, although it had burnt off by the afternoon.

If you're visiting in summer the swimming pools (including the villa pools) have shaded awnings so you need never venture into direct sun.

Inside the villas, the attention to detail was impressive. One long afternoon, as I lay on the outsized sofa in the main living room, I counted over 30 spotlights embedded in the ceiling. These are controlled by a console on the wall, the top button of which was a simple on or off, while two dimmer switches allowed for adjustment.

The ranks of lights are then grouped into three sections which, in turn, can be turned off and on or dimmed to your heart's content. At first it seems overcomplicated but then you get the hang of it. Then you spend 10 minutes happily fiddling with it until your wife explains that the console won't be on the wall much longer if you don't leave it alone.

When that happens, you can retire to one of the bedrooms, all of which have the same system. It's an irresistible early evening ritual: achieving the perfect balance of light to enjoy every last ray of the sunset without falling over the furniture.

Of course, controls can be overcomplicated. The DVD/stereo/TV control which operated the main huge flat-screen TV (each bedroom also had its own TV, DVD and VHS) was a gadget too far, for me at least. After 10 days of repeated fiddling, I was still finding new menus and short cuts to view DVDs, but then holidays are as much about discovery as relaxation, and the technological side of the villa allowed full play to that aspect.

When that was too much, we went for walks. Evening was the best time to view the construction occurring in, around and just offshore of Manama. It's not as ubiquitous as in Dubai, and certainly not on the same scale, but compared to the previously low-level city buildings of the capital Manama it's pretty impressive.

The twin towers of the Bahrain Financial Centre were reaching their full height, while further away from the resort, but still clearly visible, were the sail-like towers of the World Trade Centre.

There's much talk at the moment of the possibility of a Dubai backlash: that the Emirate is expanding too quickly, that there is too much construction, too much traffic and too many resorts being built at once.  It's probably nonsense, but for those who find pleasure in being among the first to holiday in a destination, Bahrain is gearing up to offer a real alternative.

Two Towers

Construction on the Bahrain World Trade Centre is already well advanced, writes Will McSheehy and is scheduled for completion this year, with the centre's two 50-storey trapezoidal office towers already topped out.
The distinctive BWTC towers will each contain 43 floors of office space, plus a business services floor and a podium deck featuring restaurants, gyms and other amenities. Beneath the 240-metre glass towers will be 1,700 parking spaces and an expanded Bahrain Commercial Complex, housing upmarket shops and boutiques.

"Good-quality office space is really in demand in Manama," says Claire Hughes, associate director of DTZ Bahrain, the BWTC's commercial managers. "Not only will the centre provide landmark office space, but we're confident the business services located in the trade centre will really give the economy a lift.

"We're going to have a businessmen's trade club to aid networking, for example, and the offices will be smart — meaning that connectivity is high-speed and that certain services such as booking meeting rooms and even ordering food can be automated. There's just no mixed-use property of this kind in the Gulf today."

Just a few minutes' walk from the BWTC, the Bahrain Financial Harbour (BFH) is Manama's second flagship development concept. Building on Bahrain's 30-year history of financial services, the BFH is the brainchild of local Islamic investment bank Gulf Financial House.

A US$1.3 billion development built on reclaimed land, the heart of the project is a financial centre that will comprise office towers, an open-plan financial services mall, the Bahrain Stock Exchange and the Harbour House, a centre for media organisations. There are also plans for an 18-storey insurance centre, residential towers, a five-star hotel, a modernised dhow harbour, and leisure facilities including the Bahrain Performance Centre for music and the arts.

Other developments include Bahrain City Centre: a US$400 million shopping, entertainment and leisure complex, which is to be built by UAE-based developer Majid Al Futtaim. The complex, due to be completed in 2007, will contain more than 350 stores, a 20-screen cinema and two hotels totalling 700 rooms, which will be linked directly to the mall. A huge indoor water park will also be on-site.

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