Monday, May 31, 2010

Size does matter..apparently

While I was trawling the halls at this year's Arabian Travel Market exhibition in Dubai, a hotel pop-up caught my attention. 'XYZ Hotel has the world's largest atrium lobby', it proudly proclaimed. I live in the land of superlatives so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but for some reason it's been nagging at me ever since.
The world's largest atrium (not atrium lobby) is in Las Vegas. Well, it was going to be there or Dubai, right? The Luxor's 30-storey atrium can fit 13 Boeing 747 airplanes - comfortably.
Now I love all these grandiose statements, for amusement value if nothing else, but apart from the debatable 'wow' factor, is there really a point? Are travellers booking hotels merely for gawk value (obviously) or is a hangar-like lobby with a neck-craning perspective a good way to distract mass check-in dilemmas?
Either way, I'm not sure I would spend my marketing dollar on a pop-up to position this as a major USP. But it DID catch my eye, so job done.

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