A few days ago, I received a press release titled “Radisson Blu Hotel Dubai Deira Creek Celebrates 50 Years as Dubai’s Hospitality Pioneer”.

This hotel was previously known as the InterContinental Hotel Dubai and I still call it the InterContinental. It opened on March 15, 1975 and was “Dubai’s very first five-star hotel”.

Constructed at a cost of AED 70 million and designed by the renowned Neal Prince A.S.I.D., this iconic property set a new benchmark for luxury and hospitality in the region.

The hotel used to be owned by a Dubai based family company called the Galadari Group before it was taken over by Radisson SAS Hotels & Resorts in 2006.

It’s one of my favourite buildings in Deira and I’m happy that it’s still standing (not so) tall, and one of the buildings in this city that I believe should be protected.

My favourite memories associated with InterContinental Hotel Dubai:

Mille-Feuille and Black Forest from its bakery - these would make an appearance at many family and friends birthday parties in the 1980s.
Brunch with my friends in the 1990s, before the “Dubai Brunch” was a thing.
Views from up on the Tenth cocktail bar, not been there for a while but aiming to fix that soon.

The title of this post is from the press release, which I love, and a reminder that Deira was truly the heart and centre of Dubai before the city’s rapid transformation post 2000s.

Dubai’s original centre of everything
The Radisson Blu Hotel Dubai Deira Creek has played host to royalty, presidents, prime ministers, musical artists, sporting legends, actors and designers over the years, most notably, HM Queen Elizabeth II, who stayed at the hotel during her state visit in 1979.
Former USSR President, Mikhail Gorbachev, the King & Queen of Nepal, former Polish President Aleksander Kwosniewski and former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Abdullah Ahmed Badawi have also been guests at the hotel.
Additional luminaries have included Bryan Adams, Karim Abdul Jabbar, Paloma Picasso, Aishwarya Rai, Imran Khan and actress Liz Hurley, who made her first theatre appearance in the hotel. In 1979, the hotel played host to the British Dinner Theatre, the origins of Dubai cultural diversity offering.
With its location close to Dubai International Airport, it became popular for use by airlines for their crew and signed British Airways as its first client in 1976.

More information from the press release that I found delightful:

The property opened with just three outlets, including Al Nakuda, a coffee shop, where you could get a cup of coffee or tea for just AED5.

Mixing it up
With the opening of the Plaza Building in 1980 the property realised space to expand the food and beverage offering, as well as creating some of Dubai’s earliest meeting and conference spaces, which have held everything from automotive launches, fashion shows, and theatre productions in the Plaza Ballroom which was the largest in town for the time. With its elevated position, the ballroom provides limitless views across the Dubai skyline only adding to the ambience.
Additional space for retail, made the hotel the first truly mixed-use development for its time, and innovations were clear and present in 1985, when IBM Computers won the contract to install the first computers for the front office team, enabling them to complete check-in and check-out procedures more efficiently. Milestones continued in the 90s when during its 20th anniversary year the hotel launched the city’s first 24-hour health club and introduced the concept of Friday brunch to the city in 1998.

There are plans over the next 12 months for events to celebrate the hotel’s 50th anniversary, and I’m look forward to paying a visit or two or more.

The photos below are from the press release. They didn’t come with any captions, and I’ve not heard back from the PR agency after asking for them.