LIGHTS are on in the lobby. Upstairs a cheerful bar awaits, and the restaurants look cosy and inviting. The guest rooms are made up and ready. Welcome to the Ritz Carlton.
The only problem is, there are no guests. Which is just as well, really, for there are no staff. And no food. The Ritz Carlton, in all its splendour, is a ghost hotel.
Although ready to open last August, the 25-storey hotel occupying a prime site next door to the Furama Kempinski, was caught in a curious kind of limbo when its owner, the Japanese real estate concern GGS, ran into financial difficulties.
Japanese banks that lent to GGS Hotel Holdings Ltd, the subsidiary that built the Ritz Carlton, called in their loans. GGS couldn't pay, so Hongkong-based receiver Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu was called in to try to sell the hotel.
And there the situation apparently stuck until this week when the talk turned to demolition as one option for a prospective buyer. The Ritz Carlton, experts were saying, would struggle to be profitable as a hotel. It could be converted into offices, but even that would be a difficult task. With all this hanging over it, the Ritz Carlton has an air of uncertainty that no amount of plush decorations can hide.
It's not quite correct to say that it has no staff. Telephone the executive office there and it is likely that the phone will be picked up by the general manager himself, Eric Waldburger.