Renovated Ruposhi Bangla Hotel, formerly The Dhaka Sheraton Hotel is going to be remerged and reinaugurated as The Intercontinental Dhaka on September 13th. Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the hotel.
From 2011 to 2014, this hotel was known as the Ruposhi Bangla Hotel, and was owned by the state-owned Bangladesh Services Limited. In 2014, the operation of Ruposhi Bangla Hotel was shut down for renovation. Previously, there were 272 rooms, but the number of rooms has been reduced to 231 after the renovation.
The area of each room is now ranged between 26 to 40 square meters. To ensure world-class hospitality, every fitting and other things have been renovated. Moreover, the places of the dining hall and the swimming pool have been relocated.
Previously, there was a different ballroom and on the other side of the ballroom, there was the biggest hall room named “Winter Garden”. Now, both the ballroom and the Winter Garden have been merged. The main entrance of the hotel has been relocated as well. The swimming pool has been built again in a new style.
According to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism, BSL and Intercontinental Hotel Group have made an agreement of running the hotel for 30 years. Under the management of BSL, the renovation work costs 4 billion takas. It took 5 years to complete the overall renovation. From 1983 to 2011, this hotel was known as The Dhaka Sheraton Hotel. But due to the negotiation problem, the Sheraton Hotel left the contract in 2011.
According to Wikipedia, this hotel was the first international five-star hotel in the country and opened in 1966, as the Inter-Continental Dacca when the city, (then known as Dacca) was the capital of East Pakistan. Its architect was William B. Tabler.
The hotel played host to many important political events in the run-up to the independence of Bangladesh, including negotiations on the transfer of power after the 1970 elections. During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, it was declared a neutral zone by the International Red Cross. Many buildings in its surrounding neighborhoods were targeted by the Pakistani military, including newspaper offices and university halls.
InterContinental Hotels continued to operate the hotel until 1983, when it was taken over by Sheraton, becoming the Sheraton Dhaka Hotel. In 2013, it was announced that Intercontinental Hotel Group would return to Dhaka and undertake a major renovation of the hotel
