The best InterContinental hotel in the world? We have a winner …. inside a cave in China

InterContinental has some very pleasant hotels. I should know … I stayed at their Dusseldorf, Boston and New York Times Square hotels last month, and I’ve also written a review about the Carlton in Cannes in the past.  Do a search in the search box in the top right corner to find them.

It’s fair to say that IC LeGrand in Paris is also my favourite hotel (on a value / quality / location combo) in that city, and I’ve happily booked people into the IC Park Lane in London as well.

But … you know … they seemed to be missing ‘something’. And now I know what! For a start, none of the floors of these hotel were actually built underwater, giving you views of fish floating by. None of those hotels was built inside a massive cave, either.

Luckily, InterContinental is now fixing these schoolboy errors with a new project in Shimao, China:

Want to waterski on a lake outside your room? No problem! Want to eat in an underwater restaurant? No problem!

This is the site at present, although construction work has started:

If you think this is all nonsense, then it is worth mentioning that the project is being masterminded by WS Atkins. Atkins is the British civil engineering group that designed and built the Burj Al Arab in Dubai and has a track record in actually pulling off this sort of thing.

In typical ‘waste no time’ Chinese fashion, the opening date is pencilled in for 2015. The cost is estimated at £345m, which seems a little cheap by Western standards (the refurbishment of the London IC a couple of years ago cost £75m).

You can read more about the project here.

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IHG Rewards update – June 2021:

Get bonus points: The current IHG Rewards promotion is ‘Triple Your Points’ – our full article is here. It runs from 15th May to 16th August. You receive double base points on your second stay and triple base points on your third and subsequent stays. You can register on this page of ihg.com.

New to IHG Rewards?  Read our two-part overview of IHG Rewards here and here and our article on expiry rules here.

Buy points: If you need additional IHG Rewards points, you can buy them here.

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from IHG and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.