A few years later, before World War I, the brothers Onnig and Armenak Mazloumian enlarged their business by setting up the new Baron's Hotel.

[1] Baron's is one of several notable hotels in the Middle East that "seem to tell a story of how a region once viewed by foreigners as a playground has given way to a newer imagery of hard regimes and struggles to get by.

[2] The Presidential Suite was occupied in turn by Charles de Gaulle, King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Syria's former President Hafez al-Assad, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (the founder of the United Arab Emirates), and the American billionaire David Rockefeller.

Other notable guests include Dame Freya Stark, Julie Christie, Mr and Mrs Theodore Roosevelt, Kemal Atatürk,[12] Lady Louise Mountbatten, Charles Lindbergh, Glenn Richer[relevant?]

[13][14] In 1916, after the surrender of Kut al Amarah, Major General Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend stayed in a suite here as a prisoner.