This Abandoned Chinese Hotel Is A Graveyard For Rolls-Royce Phantoms And Limousines

So, a recent video, posted on the channel Exploring the Unbeaten Path by a YouTuber who describes himself as an urban explorer, featured him and a partner traipsing through the grounds of the former Beijing Imperial Palace Hotel in Macau, China. In the parking lot, these intrepid urban explorers found a bunch of high-end luxury cars, including some Rolls-Royce Phantoms and a Hummer stretch-limousine.

Interestingly, they also found a Dodge Charger stretch limousine, which we didn't even know existed, and seems a little out of place amidst Rolls-Royce Phantoms, which can go for around $0.5 million when brand-new. But this bizarre one-off convertible van limousine built by Renault proves you can make a stretch limo out of anything. We can't wait to see the Honda Civic stretch limousine.

Why all of those high-end luxury cars are sitting at the abandoned hotel just rotting in place is a bit of mystery. It's not unheard of for luxury hotels in China to use Rolls-Royce vehicles to shuttle their guests around. But the question remains, why leave the cars there after the hotel closed? After all, most of them look like they could probably be repaired. We couldn't find the answer to that, but the reason the hotel closed down in the first place and what's happened since then features a huge legal mess, involving at least one person who is now in prison.

The YouTuber in the video claimed that the vehicles were likely part of an organized criminal operation and used to transport VIPs. In fact, the former CEO of Suncity Group Holdings Limited, one of the hotel's disputed past owners, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for, among other things, illegal gambling. But there was likely a more innocuous use for these cars.

For example, another Chinese luxury hotel, The Peninsula Beijing, uses Rolls-Royce Phantoms to shuttle their guests across the city. Rolls-Royce Phantoms are huge — they don't even have to be converted into stretch limos, as they are longer than a Range Rover LWB. The Peninsula Beijing also uses BMW 7 Series and Mercedes-Benz Vianos, all painted in the hotel's signature Peninsula Green. In the States, the hotels we've stayed at shuttled us around in Ford Transit vans, like animals.

One hotel that perhaps went a little overboard was The 13 in Hong Kong. They bought a fleet of 30 Rolls-Royce Phantoms to be used for their guests. Interestingly, rooms at that hotel were going for north of $100,000 per night. If we were ever to spend that much on a hotel room, we would expect to be picked up from the airport in a large golden carriage pulled by a team of those big Clydesdale horses from the Budweiser commercials, preceded by trumpeters and barkers who would march in front of us, loudly announcing our presence. Incidentally, The 13 later had to sell 24 of its Rolls-Royces just to pay its creditors. The hotel eventually went bankrupt and has been sold to new owners.

So, those cars parked at the Beijing Imperial Palace Hotel were probably just fancy shuttles.

So, why did the hotel close in the first place? The YouTuber and some of the video's commenters relate it to the criminal charges against the former CEO of Suncity Group Holdings Limited, one of the contested owners of the hotel. While it's possible those criminal proceedings may be part of why the hotel has never reopened, the reason it closed originally had to do with other, unrelated legal issues.

In 2016, the government found that there were serious safety concerns within the hotel, including an insufficient number of fire extinguishers and blocked exits. On top of that, it discovered that the hotel had been conducting illegal reconstructions. The authorities viewed these infractions as being a severe enough threat to the public that they shut the place down for 6 months. The shutdown seems to have happened in quite a hurry, as there were still about 1,000 guests at the hotel who had to be removed over about a day and a half when it happened, which may account for the cars being left as they were.

The shutdown was supposed to be temporary, but the doors never reopened. Instead, a long messy legal battle over the hotel's ownership ensued. The Suncity Group Holdings Limited CEO, Alvin Chau, would be arrested years later in 2021 for what appear to be unrelated gambling charges. He's currently serving an 18-year prison sentence. Now, the government has announced that it's taking back control of the land occupied by the hotel. So, what's going to happen to all of those fancy cars? Only time will tell, especially since the world seems to be moving on from limousines.