An illuminated tower soars above the clear Black Sea and the mist-covered Caucasus mountains surrounding the port town of Batumi, Georgia. Its night lights flood the skyline, revealing a new building that contrasts with the 19th-century facades of the old town and casting a warm glow over a palm tree-lined promenade of strolling lovers and giggling families. The majestic structure — the tallest on the sea’s coast — calls to mind a mosque, a library or a museum.
But, as I discovered when I entered the marble-floored lobby this summer, the building was a much more unexpected cultural treasure: an $80 million, 203-room Sheraton hotel, which opened in June and became Batumi’s first international brand hotel. Modeled on the lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt, built by Alexander the Great, it is a beacon of what Batumi aspires to become.
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