released by Doulos Phos Ship HotelBy Andy Corbley, Sep 02, 2025, It was the oldest passenger ship still floating: he turned it into an unforgettable terrestrial hotel experience.
Long since declared unseaworthy, the MV Doulos Phos is now the 5-star Doulos Phos Ship Hotel at the Bintan resort reclamation project in Indonesia.
But if you’re imagining the ship to be merely a prop, thank again. Her new owner, as nautically enthused as an interview with CNN demonstrated him to be, endeavored to keep intact every ounce of heritage that was possible to preserve, from the defunct engine room to the porthole windows.
“If I didn’t have this project, maybe I’d have a Ferrari and a Lamborghini at home, and I’d be sailing around the world every year with my family,” 74-year-old Eric Saw, a devout Christian Singaporean multi-millionaire, and the owner (captain, maybe?) of the boat and the hotel told CNN.
That project took 15 years and $18 million to complete, along with countless headaches and many inches of nails bitten down in anxiety. It was journey that barely holds a candle to the vessel’s long history.
It was 1914, just two years after Titanic sunk when SS Medina rolled off the shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. Over a career spanning 100 years, she transported agricultural goods, then military personnel during the First World War, then passengers again under the name SS Roma. In the mid-20th century, she swapped her steam engine for a diesel one, and her name (again) to MS Franca C. and set sail as a cruise liner.
Her final conversion came when she was purchased as a missionary vessel and floating library in 1977, and renamed the MV Doulos. She docked at over 100 countries, sailed hundreds of thousands of nautical miles, and was at one point the oldest operating passenger vessel on the seas.
But time ends all romances, and with a mountain of maintenance needs that no one would pay for, she was drydocked in Singapore to await bids for new ownership, 4 years shy of her 100th birthday.
Eric Saw already ran a three-story restaurant inside a Mississippi-style paddle steamer, and felt “a calling from god” to buy and repurpose the ship into a new line of work.
After three years of paying dock fees for the vessel, Saw zeroed in on a place of rest on Bintan island in Indonesia. He was offered 3 acres of reclaimed land; he requested that it form the shape of an anchor.
In October 2015, at 101 years-of-age, the newly-renamed MV Doulos Phos, or “servant of light” in Greek, embarked upon her final voyage from the island of Batam to Bintan. There she would rest upon a bed of concrete undergirded with piles extending 130 feet into the bedrock below the seabed.
Inside, the small crew and passenger cabins which were crammed and poorly lit were expanded, but some were left as-is for adventurous visitors. Elevators and fire escapes and other modern building requirements were installed to meet building codes and regs, along with modern electrical and plumbing.
released by Doulos Phos Ship HotelYet every vestige of heritage possible to save was retained, including the four life boats, which still hang from chains along her midship, and tons of material including the original rivets which held her hull together as welding hadn’t been pioneered in shipbuilding in 1914.
Perhaps because he saw it as a mission from god, Saw takes a salary of $1.00 a year, while all operating profit is donated to charitable causes—a servant of the light, in name and nature. He Beached an Old Cruise Ship and Turned it into $18 Million Beachfront Hotel with Love
