A contentious empire

Greenlit in 1956, opened in 1961, Hotel Phoenicia in Beirut marked the arrival of the United States to the Lebanese hotel industry. Most telling, it was the first Middle East holding of the U.S-owned Intercontinental Hotel Corporation – a subsidiary of Pan American Airways – signaling growing U.S. capital interest, and influence, in Beirut and Lebanon. This article explores the history of Hotel Phoenicia through primary sources on its genesis, building, marketing, and sustaining. It argues that the hotel represented an American attempt at empire, through tourism, in the Middle East. This form of empire during the Cold War was distinct from earlier, European colonialism in its reliance on commercial airpower, corporate branding, and governmental investment in the absence of territorial annexation. Pan Am's global reach and vision for American influence, backed by the U.S. government, sought to make an American enclave and closed tourist loop, from U.S. marketing to U.S. air travel to U.S. hotel and pro-U.S. business practices in Beirut. Nonetheless, this process was contentious and multi-directional. Accordingly, the article emphasises how local businessmen, tourism promoters, and popular culture surrounding the hotel leveraged U.S. interest, setting the Phoenicia as an indigenous, modern hotel in an outward looking country

Ancient history · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Geography · Political science · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Middle East Politics and Society

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  Open Access•Kevin J James•The Journal of Transport History•2025

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