Two oil companies have signed on to Mohamed Al Fayed's plans to open a hotel on an oil rig off the east coast of Scotland.
The Harrods owner wants to create a 50-bedroom country-house style hotel on a platform in the Cromarty Firth (...) by 2008. If approved, the attraction would also boast a visitor centre, a shop and a restaurant. Two unidentified oil companies have approved the use of their platforms.
Cromarty Firth is located in north-eastern Scotland and is one of the major firths on the east shore of the Moray Firth. It contains a range of high-quality coastal habitats including extensive intertidal mud-flats and shingle bordered locally by areas of saltmarsh, as well as reedbeds around Dingwall. The rich invertebrate fauna of the intertidal flats, with beds of eelgrass Zostera spp., glasswort Salicornia spp., and Enteromorpha algae, all provide important food sources for large numbers of wintering and migrating waterbirds (swans, geese, ducks and waders). With adjacent estuarine areas elsewhere in the Moray Firth, it is the most northerly major wintering area for wildfowl and waders in Europe. The Firth is also of importance as a feeding area for locally breeding Osprey Pandion haliaetus as well as for breeding terns.
Hotels, In The News, Offshore, Future Locations 
