Gents, if you look at the report again, you will see a significant amount of writing on how the hotel had the appearance of being the runway. The started flying toward the hotel for landing until they got closer and realized that the hotel was not the runway and that the runway was now in view to their right. This is when they levelled off(or reduced their rate of descent). Therefore, I interpret this incident to be a case of suddenly going after the first thing that comes into view(which led to their descending more quickly and laterally from final approach.
A case of visual illusion. As for required visual reference, I would assume that they felt they had the reference(what they felt to be the runway) although in fact they were mistaken. I have seen a guy suddenly go for something he thought was the runway when it wasn't even close to being the runway. It happens sometimes. The best we can do to learn from this experience is to ask ourselves how to avoid this happening to us. With most NPA now being near-equivalent to ILS approaches, it actually shouldn't be too difficult....maintain your stabilized approach and resist the temptation to change things suddenly based on an outside picture that may be legal but misleading.