Pictures: The UAE's First-Ever Hotel

The BOAC Rest House is the first UAE hotel to be built in the 1930s.

Imperial Airways, which later merged with British Airways to establish the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) in 1939, originally constructed the BOAC Rest House in response to the need for an overnight stop for its airliners on the western Gulf air-route to India, according to an article in Liwa, a journal published by the UAE’s National Archives.

For nine months, while the building was under construction, overnight passengers used a tented camp.

On BOAC’s withdrawal during 1947-48, a new company, International Aeradio Limited, took over the Sharjah airfield as an important station for air traffic control in the Gulf. It remained the only hotel in the Trucial States until the 1960s.

First hotel paves way for establishing bank, hospital.

The Rest House had indirectly contributed to the establishment of what became the British Bank of the Middle East and the Al-Maktoum hospital in Dubai.

While waiting for these institutions to be constructed in Dubai, some of their personnel lived at the airfield and commuted into either Dubai or Sharjah.

It is one of the oldest cultural institutions in the UAE and the largest organisation of its kind in the Arabian Gulf region. In addition to its role in documentation and archiving, the National Archives provides intellectuals with a variety of publications, including Liwa journal, that explore both authentic cultural and contemporary issues in history and heritage.

Image Source: WAM