For the world’s first floating hotel, this is the final stop on a strange 10,000-mile journey that began over 30 years ago with glamorous helicopter rides and fine dining, but ended in tragedy. Although there was hope that the floating hotel, a centerpiece of the Mount Kumgang resort area, could have another lease of life, this turned out not to be the case. Information in South Korea said the Haegumgang floating hotel was among the sites destroyed by the North Korean government in 2022, along with the Onjonggak Rest House, where televised meetings between separated relatives from both sides of the DMZ had previously been held. It’s a sad end to a long and colorful story, which continues below.
A night on the reef
The floating hotel was designed as a luxury stopover for divers. Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images The floating hotel was the brainchild of Doug Tarca, a professional diver and entrepreneur born in Italy and living in Townsville, on the northeast coast of Queensland, Australia. “He had a lot of love and appreciation for the Great Barrier Reef,” says Robert de Jong, curator at the Townsville Maritime Museum. In 1983, Tarca founded a company, Reef Link, to take day trippers by catamaran from Townsville to a reef formation off the coast. “But then he said, “Wait. How about letting people stay on the reef overnight?” At first, Tarca considered mooring old cruise ships permanently on the reef, but realized it would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly to design and build a custom floating hotel. Construction began in 1986 at the Bethlehem shipyard in Singapore, a subsidiary of a major US steel company that is now defunct. The hotel cost about $45 million — more than $100 million in today’s money — and was transported by heavy-lift ship to John Brewer Reef, its chosen site in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. “It’s a horseshoe-shaped reef, with calm water in the center, so perfect for a floating hotel,” says de Jong. The hotel was secured to the ocean floor by seven huge anchors, placed in such a way as not to damage the reef. No sewage was pumped into the sea, water was recirculated and any rubbish was taken to a site on the mainland, somewhat limiting the environmental impact of construction. Christened the Four Seasons Barrier Reef Resort, it officially opened for business on March 9, 1988. “It was a five-star hotel and it wasn’t cheap,” says de Jong. “It had 176 rooms and could accommodate 350 guests. There was a nightclub, two restaurants, a research laboratory, a library and a shop where you could buy diving equipment. There was even a tennis court, although I think most of the balls of tennis probably ended up in the Pacific.”
A bottle of whiskey
The hotel did not cope well with bad weather, with guests often stranded. Townsville Maritime Museum Getting to the hotel required either a two-hour ride on a speedy catamaran, or a much quicker helicopter ride — also more expensive, at an inflation-adjusted $350 per round trip. The novelty of it all caused a lot of buzz at first and the hotel was a divers dream. Even non-divers could enjoy incredible views of the reef, thanks to a special submarine called The Yellow Submarine. However, it soon became clear that the effects of bad weather on visitors had been underestimated. “If the weather was bad and you had to go back to town to get a plane, the helicopter couldn’t fly and the catamaran couldn’t sail, so that was a lot of hassle,” says de Jong. Interestingly, the hotel staff lived on the top floor, which in a floating hotel is the least desirable location because it wobbles the most. According to de Jong, the staff used an empty whiskey bottle hanging from the ceiling to measure the roughness of the sea: when it started to shake out of control, they knew many guests would be stranded. “That was probably one of the reasons why the hotel was never really a commercial success,” he says. There were other problems: a cyclone hit the structure just a week before opening, irreparably damaging a freshwater pool that was part of the complex. A World War II munitions dump was found two miles from the hotel, spooking some guests. And there wasn’t really much to do besides diving or snorkeling. After just one year, the Four Seasons Barrier Reef Resort had become too expensive to operate and closed without ever reaching full occupancy. “It disappeared really quietly,” de Jong says, “and was sold to a company in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam that was trying to attract tourists.”
An unlikely destination
After a failure off the coast of the Great Barrier Reef, he spent a year in Vietnam and then moved to North Korea.
Hyundai Asan Corporation
In 1989 the floating hotel began its second voyage, this time 3,400 miles north. Renamed the Saigon Hotel — but better known as “The Floater” — it remained moored in the Saigon River for nearly a decade.
“It became really successful and I think the reason was that it wasn’t in the middle of nowhere but on a quay. It was floating, but it was connected to the mainland,” says de Jong.
In 1998, however, The Floater ran out of money and closed. But instead of being dismantled, it found an unlikely new lease of life: it was bought by North Korea to attract tourists to Mount Kumgang, a scenic area near the South Korean border.
“At that time, the two Koreas were trying to build bridges, talking to each other. But many hotels in North Korea were not really tourist-friendly,” says de Jong.
After another 2,800-mile journey, the floating hotel was ready for its third adventure, under the new name Hotel Haegumgang. It opened in October 2000 and was operated by a South Korean company, Hyundai Asan, which also operated other facilities in the area and offered packages for South Korean tourists.
Over the years, the Mount Kumgang area has attracted more than 2 million tourists, according to Hyundai spokeswoman Asan Park Sung-uk.
“Also, the Mount Kumgang Tour improved inter-Korean reconciliation and served as a focal point for inter-Korean exchanges, as the center for the reunification of separated families to heal the sorrows of national division,” he says.
A tragedy
It is believed that access to the hotel was restricted to North Korea’s political elite. Hyundai Asan Corporation In 2008, a North Korean soldier shot and killed a 53-year-old South Korean woman who had wandered beyond the boundaries of the Mount Kumgang tourist area and into a military zone. As a result, Hyundai Asan suspended all tours and Hotel Haegumgang closed along with everything else. It is not clear if the hotel has operated at all since then, but certainly not for South Korean tourists. “Information is sketchy, but I believe the hotel only operated for members of the North Korean ruling party,” says de Jong. On Google Maps, it can still be seen moored at a pier in the Mount Kumgang area, rusting away. In 2019, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un visited the Mount Kumgang tourist area and criticized many of the facilities, including Hotel Haegumgang, for being shabby; ordered the demolition of many of them as part of a plan to redesign the area in a style more suited to North Korean culture. In the meantime, the legacy of the floating hotel remains intact. It will probably remain one of a kind, as the concept of floating hotels has not really been implemented. Or — in a sense — it has. “The ocean is full of floating hotels,” says de Jong. “They’re just called cruise ships.”
