LAST RESORT
Inside the abandoned hotel resort that was once so luxurious it had a ‘champagne swimming pool and unlimited lobster’
HALUDOVO Palace Hotel was once a luxury resort in Croatia, boasting limitless champagne, tax-free gambling and sexy female staff.
However, just one year after opening, it went bankrupt - before being abandoned years later due to lack of funding and a civil war.
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The hotel opened on the island of Krk in 1972, when Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia.
Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione invested $45m (£34m) into the resort, adding the Penthouse Adriatic Club Casino.
He had hoped to inspire relations between the US and Yugoslavia by encouraging Americans to visit the island.
It was perfectly timed following the opening of Rijeka airport in 1971, which was just 15 minutes away from the resort.
Inside the hotel were cocktail bars, saunas, golf courses, tennis courts and swimming pools with one .
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Despite the country being communist at the time, foreign visitors were able to flock to the hotel to enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle of partying, drinking and gambling - the latter of which the locals were banned from participating in.
According , guests were thought to have eaten 100kg of lobster and 11 pounds of caviar every day, with hundreds of bottles of champagne to wash it all down.
One of the most famous people to have stayed at the hotel was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Staff at the hotel were reportedly called Penthouse "Pets" and wore French maid uniforms while they kept the champagne flowing.
However, the hotel went bankrupt within a year.
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The hotel continued to operate for another two decades, despite losing some of its reputation for luxury.
But in the 1990s, when the civil war broke out, the number of tourists plummeted.
The hotel even housed refuges between 1991 and 1995.
But eventually, the hotel became abandoned.
Since then, the ruins have become a popular place for tourists looking for abandoned places even though it no longer has any furniture.
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And broken glass and graffiti are now everywhere in what's left.
Many attempts to restore the resort followed, although most parts of the hotel were sold off to private companies at a low cost.
The most recent attempt to but permission was denied when it was decided that the majority of the coastline would have to be closed during the $300m (£232) renovations.
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