ALMASA New Capital Reviewed

Mammoth Hotel

The long-awaited ALMASA Royal Palace at the New Administrative Capital has finally opened its doors! It is not a typical hotel resort, mind you. Besides the normal hotel amenities and offerings, the hotel boasts a shooting range, cinema complex and an artificial beach! It is no wonder then that everything is literally about three times larger than their anticipated size! Given that the construction was undertaken by the Armed Forces Engineering Authority, the 102-acre project was done in about fifteen months only, according to General Manager Rafic Khairallah, who still perceives it as a miracle. “The biggest highlight is definitely the spaciousness of the rooms and the hotel in general. It’s actually over 85 thousand square meters. The smallest of the rooms take up 50 square meters each,” Khairallah explained to us. The Royal Palace accounts for 270 deluxe hotel rooms and 90 luxury suites.

The Rooms

The deluxe rooms are as convenient as any five-star hotel, but you will definitely enjoy the extra space if you’re bunking with a friend or a spouse. Their color palette is blue and gold, which we thought, simultaneously carried this elegant yet cozy, homey feel to it. If you end up staying there, you will enjoy a complementary fruit basket and mini dessert samples, teddy-bear-size pillows and high-quality bathroom essentials that exceed your regular needs. On another note, the luxury suites are positioned on a much higher caliber. They have everything you could require for fancy living, featuring Victorian-themed bathroom tubs and antique dressers! As fancy as they are, their one night stay is for a nonsensical price that requires you to rob a bank to be able to afford.

Photo by : Bashayer Alridi

Spa & Fitness Centers

For recreational purposes, make sure not to miss out on ALMASA’s fitness centers and agreeable spa facilities. We specifically recommend the gym and the spa at the Trio Clubhouse. Crème-marbled walls and floors, accompanied by hippie-looking lanterns and a Turkish bath make this spa more luxurious and aesthetically amusing than the standard one by the Royal Palace. The gym there is bigger and better equipped, as well.

photo by Bashayer Alridi

Sports & Entertainment

You might also come across a real shooting room as the hotel actually houses its very own shooting range. If you’ve dreamt about practicing your target skills like we have, you could either register a gun or sign up for laser shooting. Thankfully, they have plans to provide shooting coaches in the future! If you’re a gamer, make sure to hit the game area, where you can play billiard or as many PlayStation4 as games you want. If you have kids, don’t worry about it. You can drop them off at the kids’ fully-engaging play area right next door to the game room. Other honorable mentions include the outdoor and indoor pools, tennis court, football playground, shopping mall and cinema complex.

Photo by: Bashayer Alridi

photo by Bashayer Alridi

Events & More

Not only does ALMASA oblige to its customers’ pleasure, it also offers accommodation for more formal events. This is where the Business Center and Summit Hall come in. “The Summit can actually take up to 54 presidents on the round table – both Arab and African leagues. This is the only convention room this size in the Middle East and Africa,” Khairallah told us. Apart from that, the business center is full of conference rooms, designed immaculately for that type of setting.

photo by Bashayer Alridi

More pinnacles at ALMASA Capital include the gorgeously decorated, not to mention, largest theater in Egypt, the Crystal building that is anticipated to have an evolving steakhouse opening this summer, and finally, an artificial beach! “We brought the beach to the dessert! We have a beach with artificial waves and it’s a sand beach and everything. There are machines that retract water and inject it again in specific places, where it can create that effect of real waves,” Khairallah told us.

Dining

For the foodies, we will not deny you a restaurant review, either. During our visit, we ate at the Italian restaurant, La Sponda. The chef offered nothing less than a top-end restaurant would. Lunch was impeccable! It was a five-course meal starting with an eggroll appetizer, followed by a mini mushroom shrimp salad, then chicken and cheese ravioli. The main course comprised a juicy beef fillet and potato, and was conveniently followed by Tiramisu for dessert. Honorable mention to the beautifully diverse breadbasket that just kept on coming.

photo by Bashayer Alridi

Looking Ahead

When asked what their greatest challenge is, Khairallah replied, “We are currently in the middle of the desert but soon we will be in the heart of the new administrative capital. The challenge is to convince or change the perception that we are far away. This will be easily done later on when the new capital kicks off and you have other businesses or multinational companies setting up around us.”

The main purpose of the new ALMASA extension was put into words by GM Rafic Khairallah as follows: “I think Egypt should take back the role that it had before. It was leading everywhere in fashion, arts and music. I think Egypt should go back to being the leading country in the Middle East and Africa. The idea is to really showcase what Egyptians can do, and they’ve already done a lot. They’ve done the pyramids and temples. They have built this place in 15 months. It’s a record time to build such a large project. The idea behind it is to foster the image that Egypt is the leading country in the Middle East and Africa, and it should really get back to that.”

photo by Bashayer Alridi

To be completely honest, we don’t really know how inviting this hotel will be to the everyday, garden-variety Egyptians. Its success will inevitably depend on them, despite the hotel management’s focus targeted on hosting political figures and powerful business people.

By Sarah Guirguis