Five luxury hotels will be connected to the City Center building; two on its east side and the others on the west. The five luxury hotels include the two Marriott hotels, the Marriott Courtyard and the Renaissance Hotel; the Doha Shangri-La; the Doha Rotana Hotel and a new Merweb. “The Marriott hotels will be opened sometime this year and the others next year. You will see the construction going on on both sides of the City Centre,” said Majd Machfej, centre manager at the City Center. The Renaissance Hotel, which will have around 257 rooms and The Courtyard, which will have around 204, will be opened by the end of the year. The Marriott Group will also open the Marriott Executive Apartments, which will have around 123 rooms, during the same period. The Doha Shangri-La, which will be managed by the Faisal Bin Oassim Al Thani & Sons Holding Company, will open here in 2010. Developed by the Al Rayyan Tourism Development Company, the hotel will have 272 luxurious guest rooms with wireless LAN and high-speed Internet access, 42 serviced apartments and a variety of restaurants including a lobby lounge: Leyla, a piano bar; Sridan, a Middle-Eastern food souq; a Latin American restaurant called Fuego and a Chinese seafood restaurant, Xi’an. The recreation facilities will include Shangri-La’s signature spa, CHI, The Spa at Shangri-La. The hotel will include an 840 square metre grand ballroom and other function rooms. It will also have a helipad on the top floor to facilitate the arrival of VIP guests. Machfej said the City Center will undergo renovations at the rear of the mall and will have the front part landscaped in two months’ time. “We will fill the back area with retail spaces and change the cut of the mall… So we will have more shops on the main walkway.” Machfej said the City Center wants to attract more brands to the mall. “There are many businesses coming to Qatar now and so we are trying to have more space to attract them to our mall.” http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=April2009&file=Local_News2009042322223.xml

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