IT SOUNDS like a bad Kevin Costner film, but Reefworld, to be built off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, claims to be the world’s first fully eco-friendly floating hotel.

Designed by the British architect Richard Hywel Evans, whose work is inspired by the likes of Thunderbirds and Dr No, it will generate its own heat and power using turbines, solar panels and underwater trickle-charge generators.

Built with “100% approval” from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Reefworld promises a “full underwater spa”, eight underwater bedrooms with glass-walled bathrooms and a research facility to conduct reef and coral research when it opens in 2010.

Glen Edwards, a Cairns dive-boat operator, is unimpressed. “We’re going backwards, not forwards,” he said. “The reef is incredibly fragile. Instead of letting people build hotels on it, the authorities should ban development.”

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