Andermatt mega-project

The powder-snow area is very popular with winter sports enthusiasts. Now a self-contained village with 6 hotels is planned here. The plans include 600 apartments, 800 hotel rooms, 100 prestigious villas, a shopping center, a golf course and a wellness area with a wonderful bathing complex for relaxation and health restoration. Andermatt currently has 1,400 residents and 1,500 guest beds. This will drastically increase the number of guest beds available in Andermatt.

Andermatt is Samih Sawiris’s first European project. But the idyllic mountain village is not in danger. The aim is not to bring mass tourism to Andermatt, but to create new jobs for residents, ideally integrated into the established community. Careful treatment of the intact, unspoiled environment is also a top priority. The Andermatt project will cost 500 million. Construction is scheduled to begin in spring 2009, and by the end of the project in late 2010, Andermatt will have changed considerably. There are not many opponents of the Andermatt project, perhaps a few farming families who are by no means willing to sell their land. For the authorities, however, Sawiris’s project is a blessing in light of Andermatt’s economic crisis.

For Egyptian investor Samih Sawiris, the ski resort in Andermatt is not his first major tourism project. In El Gouna on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, Sawiris has already built a lagoon town with many hundreds of guest beds and runs this unique town himself. In El Gouna, you can spend your holidays in almost European surroundings in both summer and winter.