The Atlantis hotel on Palm Jumeirah was swamped by visitors and plagued with complaints in its opening week, as staff turned away diners from packed restaurants and the taps ran dry in guest rooms. At one point much of the hotel was without water for more than seven hours when the resort’s main water intake valve ruptured. Guests refused to check out of their rooms until they could shower and change, leaving hundreds of new arrivals stranded in the lobby. “This is not a situation you want to be in when you are opening a resort of this size,” said Alan Leibman, the resort’s managing director. The water problem, like the fire that caused an estimated Dh128 million (US$34.8m) worth of damage to the hotel’s lobby just weeks before it opened, was “just one of those things that happens”, he said. The two problems were unrelated.