Building a tropical resort in Northern Germany

The Resort also offers a variety of sports and recreation facilities such as Yoga, Qui Gong, Meditation, water aerobics, Jogging, power walking and beach volleyball, with high-quality child-care available with a diversity of activities.

The flora and fauna

Now it must be remembered that the German Niederlausitz region is not a tropical destination. To establish an authentic rainforest in the Northern latitudes, a team of internationally renowned botanists and landscape architects was needed. Besides housing the lagoon and the "south seas", the resort consists of 80 % green space.

Botanists, landscape architects and designers from South America, Sri Lanka, Great Britain and Germany were hired to take on the challenge of creating a vegetation as authentic and natural as possible.

Most of the 500 different species of plants come from the Asian-Pacific regions. An extensive study of the specific needs of the various plants as to substratum, temperature and lighting conditions was necessary in order to combine the floras of the various tropical regions on earth.

The soil of the resort had to be specially created and a blend consisting of sand of the region (70 %) and of organic waste, clay and bark (30 %) formed the basis with additional tropical fungi combined to nurture the symbiosis of plants and soil. Thus, there was almost no need for peat, chemical fertiliser and other ecologically harmful substances. The plants are watered automatically via a computer-monitored system in order to ensure high efficiency water consumption. The "south seas" consists of drinking water with fresh water constantly being added while the used water is cleaned by a filtration system located beneath the rainforest and used for watering of the rainforest. Air humidity inside the Dome is at 50-60 %, temperatures in the hall vary from 25 to 28° Centigrade. Founder Colin Au, a former chemical engineer and MBA, put the entire project together inside two years at a cost of 70 million Euro to create an authentic tropical short-trip destination with a capacity of 7,000 visitors open year-round, 24 hours a day.

It was not a huge gamble but a complex mathematical equation upon which he secured his largely Asian funding for the project. A population of five million lives within an hour's drive, 16 million live within three hours drive and Schönefeld international airport is just 30 minutes away.

Located in the Niederlausitz region at the A13 highway, Tropical Islands Resort lies within easy drive of Berlin (60 km) as well as from Dresden (100 km).

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