World's biggest hotels

by Anthony Grant with Minh Tu Nguyen and Rachel Slaff, October 11, 2007

ARE you the kind of traveller who's slightly allergic to three-room B&Bs that are impossible to find and require morning nibbling around a table full of strangers?

Presenting the Forbes Traveler list of the world's biggest hotels, which for some may represent the impersonal travel experience defined, but for thousands are simply the steel-and-concrete answers to any traveller's most pressing question, "Where to stay?"

It's no surprise that the more rooms a property has, the easier time you'll have securing a reservation.

Indeed, we based our rankings on that single criterion: room count. And while budget didn't factor into it, it's also a maxim of travel that the bigger the hotel, the lower the rates: a huge inventory of rooms means better deals and upgrades can often be had for the asking.

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With very few exceptions, the biggest hotels in the United States are to be found in Las Vegas. In fact, until recently, Sin City's MGM Grand, with 5044 rooms, was the largest hotel in the world, but since 2006 that distinction has belonged to the First World Hotel in the Genting Highlands of Malaysia.

Like most megahotels, the First World is about more than just a place to hang one's hat - although with 6118 rooms, doing so should be a cinch - the sizeable premises incorporate a theme park and 152,000sq m of shopping space, too.

Speaking recently to Malaysian tourism officials, Alan Teo, president of the resort group that built the First World Hotel, said, "It is a huge and challenging task to cater to such volume in a single location. We have in place 32 check-in counters with 64 terminals located in the hotel lobby, requiring a Queue Management System to manage a maximum check-in capacity of 700 rooms per hour."

For guests and other gawkers, the memorable thing about this big hotel chart topper may be its gaily painted exterior-a veritable rainbow splash that might break a zoning code elsewhere but here just ramps up the fun factor.

But for Teo, it just might be keeping all those sheets clean: "We are delighted that our Laundry Department was featured by Discovery Travel," he declared in his speech. "The facility has a total floor space of 26,000 square feet (7925 sq m) allocated just to cater to the guest laundry and beddings requirements. The laundry department manages an amazing production of 40 tons (36.3 tonnes) worth of laundry per day."

Hilton's Hawaiian Village ranks 12th on the Forbes Traveler list. The hotel's beginnings date back to 1954 when entrepreneur Henry J. Kaiser and partner Fritz Burns purchased the John Ena Estate in Waikiki, the adjacent Niumalu Hotel and several contiguous lots from individual owners originally totalling 20 acres.

"One of the biggest draws about the Hilton Hawaiian Village is that it is a true oasis of a resort in world-famous Waikiki," says the resort's press spokesperson Dara Young.

"We're an all-inclusive resort on 22 acres (8.9 hectares) featuring more than 3200 rooms across six towers and five swimming pools-all found on Waikiki's widest stretch of beach."

Young adds that despite its size, there is about 50 per cent open space, leaving plenty of room to explore.

But by and large (and we do mean very large), Las Vegas steals this show. From The Venetian, Excalibur and Paris Las Vegas to the 3066-room Palazzo set to welcome its first guests in December, Vegas is certifiably the king of the hospitality hill.

The quintessentially concocted destination hotels, replete from the imported grains of sand and the never-ending circus to Celine Dion belting out songs with regularity of the Old Faithful geyser, have transformed tourist experiences and expectations.

Las Vegas reinvents itself even as it remains fundamentally the same: freewheeling, tacky and totally exuberant. It's a combination that makes people-lots of them-curious, and begs over-the-top hotels to up the ante.

Why doesn't Dubai show on our list? If that burgeoning city's Burj al-Arab Hotel is the world's tallest (321m), it still can't top the others on our list for room count. And before too long the Rose Tower at 333m, also in Dubai, will surpass the Burj in height.

Another hostelry that was a legend in its time (and not for luxury) but that didn't make it onto the list is the now defunct Hotel Rossiya in Moscow. The 21-storey monster, built in 1967 on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev who perhaps anticipated a rush of tourists eager to queue for bread at area bakeries, had 3200 rooms. However, it closed in 2006 and is being demolished to make room for a new hotel of some 2000 rooms.

If the mere thought of staying in a mammoth hotel like the 4408-room the Luxor in Las Vegas seems the antithesis of inspired travel - expanding one's horizons, revelling in discovery - consider the upside: You're probably not going to want to drag the kids to a trendy boutique hotel in Rome, or party with your girlfriends at a standard-issue Westin in, say, Boston. Checking into one of the big boys might just unleash a summer camp kind of vibe, refocusing your priorities on a) fun, b) your convention or c) contemplating that half-scale Eiffel Tower looming above the desert floor outside your window.

Reservations, anyone? (Credit: The Daily Telegraph)