The hotel chain that was going to build a 7-star hotel, Bahía Fenicia - its first in Spain - has gone ahead with one but in neighbouring Málaga, instead.

Now, Banyan Tree Group signed an accord with La Quinta Grupo Inmobiliario to handle the management of the hotel development under the name Angsana Real de La Quinta Benahavis Marbella, which should open its door during 2026. The hotel-resort will have 90 rooms and suites, three restaurants, a spa, kiddies club, a swimming pool for all the family and a ampitheatre for weddings.

Hopes for the hotel to be buit in this province ran very high so the news of it going elsewhere has been a major blow.

It had all begun in 2010 with the economic crisis still biting hard that the Peñon del Lobo was chosen as the site for a much prized, 7-star hotel; the first in Europe, belonging to Bahía Fenicia Residencial S. L, backed by an important Danish investor – the latter went bust. The hotel was going to cost 230m euros to build and have 600 staff. Services on offer were limousines, helicopters, butlers, etc.

In 2019, before the epidemic, it was decided to go ahead with the residential part of the hotel-resort in Almuñécar but apart from a lot of earth movements, nothing came of it. The plot was 13,341 sq/m.

The Danish Ambassador at the time, Lars Thuesen, was present when the project was presented to the public by the then-Mayor Juan Carlos Benavides. The Central Government even offererd a grant of 4.7m euros, paid once it was concluded, but it never was. Things took a tumble when the Junta put the brakes on because the Town Hall hadn’t supplied an evironmental-impact study, taking a further four more years to produce it. The developer finally got all the necessary paperwork in 2014 but the moment had passed and the project fell into oblivion.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)