Strummer holidays! The guitar-shaped hotel where the party never stops
It’s got laser-beam strings, balcony showers and a 13-acre pool. But this gawdy $1.5bn colossus in the Florida swamps is also a triumph of Native American resistance. We check out the Beyoncé Suite
It doesn’t get much more rock’n’roll than standing stark naked at the top of a 450ft tall mirrored-glass guitar, taking an al fresco shower on the balcony of your penthouse overlooking the sun-soaked plains of Florida, as millions of dollars are gambled beneath you. With its own rooftop swimming pool and butler service, the Beyoncé Suite (as it’s now known following the singer’s stay here) is one of the more surreal features of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel – a building that, more than any other, embodies the end-of-the-world hedonism of the new roaring 20s.
Near Fort Lauderdale, and wedged between the busy highways of Florida’s Turnpike and Route 441, the $1.5bn complex takes the roadside architecture of the Las Vegas strip to the ultimate extreme, bringing a dose of razzmatazz to the southern swamps.
Since 1988, Native American tribes can operate casinos if they share the revenue with states. It is now a $34bn industry
Tribe members have gone from living in thatched huts to owning SUVs, boats and second homes on the coast
