The Hotel Atlantic was constructed at a cost of 14 million gold marks and was designed to house passengers on transatlantic ocean liners of the Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) and the Hamburg South America Line.

[1] It was opened on 2 May 1909 by Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow and HAPAG general director Albert Ballin.

Following the end of World War II, it was requisitioned by the British Armed Forces and used as their Hamburg headquarters from 1945 to 1950.

[4] In 1997, parts of the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies were filmed in the hotel.

In 2017, it was announced that the hotel would cease to be managed by Kempinski in January 2021 and would switch to Marriott's Autograph Collection chain.