$2.4 Million Ice Lounge Opens in Dubai

Would you pay $150,000 to buy 92,000 kilograms of ice, ship them all from Ontario to Dubai, pay an ice sculpture company $400,000 to make ice stuff out of it as a business?

Well, Sharaf Group just did the same. They spent a bit more here and there, and with the help of a Canada-based company, Iceculture, invested $2.4 million to open an ice lounge in Dubai called Chillout - the first in the Middle East. They are going to repeat the experience in eight other cities in the Middle East and Asia.

It is a typical ice lounge: everything is made of ice: you will lounge on ice furniture and drink from glasses made of ice. You need to pay $16 entrance fee, but that's probably not how Sharaf Group is going to see its $2.4 million investment back: The lounge would be the main attraction of the Group's recently opened mall Times Square ("Times Square"? As a reader of DubaiBeat.com, you know how things get a bit crazy here when it comes to New York names and stuff. Although there are many non-New-York places called Times Square)