- Located in Pyongyang, the Ryugyong Hotel was supposed to open its doors more than 25 years ago.
This hotel has never welcomed a single guest, despite costing £1.6 billion to build.
Located in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the Ryugyong Hotel was supposed to welcome its first guests more than 25 years ago.
The hotel has been compared to “Mordor” due to its pyramid-shaped structure and its location in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Construction of the hotel began in 1987 and, had it been completed on schedule two years later, it would have been the tallest hotel in the world.
North Korea’s Ryungyong Hotel is the world’s tallest unoccupied building with 105 empty floors
The hotel has been compared to “Mordor” due to its pyramid-shaped structure and its location in one of the poorest countries in the world.
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Today it has the slightly more unwanted record of being the tallest unoccupied building in the world.
There were plans to build 3,000 rooms in the hotel, which would have spread them across the three-winged building.
However, work was halted in 1992 as North Korea faced an economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union that year.
After a 16-year hiatus, an Egyptian contractor, the Orascom Group, took over the project and restarted construction in 2008, according to Reuters.
After a prolonged hiatus in development of the hotel, exterior glass panels were subsequently installed in July 2011.
The development led North Korean officials to reassure that the hotel would eventually open in 2012 – which was pushed back to 2013 after another delay.
Throughout this period, German luxury hotel group Kempinski was to oversee management of the site, but withdrew just months after taking it over, saying it was “currently not possible” to be present on the North Korean market at the time.
Of course, any hopes that the hotel could eventually open in some capacity have not come to fruition, with the hotel considered completely empty inside as of today.
