Kempinski Damascus Hotel

Sabboura is a green-field with 100 hectares, located in the Yarfour area of rural Damascus, 17 km west of the Syrian capital and adjacent to the Damascus-Beirut highway, at a distance of 22 km from the Lebanese border and 175 Km from Amman, in Jordan. For this relatively flat site, a former military base surrounded at distance by the Golan Heights, the MAF Group commissioned a vast masterplan, initially developed by AECOM and further complemented by Nabil Gholam, with the aim of creating a leading regional and international tourism destination.

The development, be-named Khams Shamat, aimed to attract visitors from Lebanon, Jordan and the Gulf region, and comprised a mixed-use development zoned to accommodate a shopping centre, a large public park, business districts, tourism vacationing quarters and ancillary uses.

At the heart of this masterplan, the Kempinski hotel would be the landmark of the site, both architecturally and programmatically, insofar as it comprised, besides the 250 keys hotel and function centre, a serviced apartments’ tower with a height of over a 100 metres; the latter being Khams Shamat’s tallest building. Its location, next to the key pedestrian entrances to the shopping centre, faces a square that would be the civic forum of the whole development and its most prestigious address.