The history of the Eemshotel

The story of the Eemshotel begins with Mr. Ritsema. Sadly, Mr. Ritsema himself died in a tragic accident, and therefore his dream of the Eemshotel never came to fruition. The following passage from 1965 describes Mr. Ritsema's motivation at the time for commissioning the construction of such a unique hotel on stilts in the sea.



Just outside the seawall at Delfzijl, forty sixteen-meter-long poles have been driven into the Wadden Sea bed, down to a meter below the mud. This is the (invisible) beginning of the Eemshotel, where in about eight months, guests will eat, drink, and sleep eight meters above sea level, according to the plans of farmer AW Ritsema (43) from Holwierde.

“A cafe-restaurant above the sea is nothing special anymore, but a complete hotel is unique in Europe,” says the creator of the Eemshotel, who estimates the preliminary costs at one million guilders.

The Eemshotel, two stories above the sea, with the possibility of adding a third floor, increasing the number of rooms from eleven to over thirty. The hotel will be connected to the mainland by a covered walkway. Pouring the 360-square-meter concrete floor eight meters above the sea, without the use of conventional formwork, will be a bit of a stunt, just as this entire hotel is a stunt by one man, who calls himself a farmer but is more of a businessman, someone who has never done anything but build.

"I'm not rich, but I do believe that if you have something, you should do something with it, for yourself and for the community, which will soon comprise twenty million people. Of course, I'm not a philanthropist. Nevertheless, with the money I invest in the Eemshotel, I could certainly earn more in other ways, but I see this as a northern interest," says the spiritual father of the first offshore hotel.