A short list, not a directory: the quiet island, the sail, the palace, the fort in the desert. Tell us the dates and who is coming, and the concierge secures the room and everything around it.
Jumeirah Bay Island from above: the Bulgari's villas, beaches and yacht-club marina
Jumeirah Bay at dusk: Downtown across the water, the quiet side of the city
Jumeirah Bay Island
Bulgari Resort Dubai
The hideaway: a private island the city keeps for itself
The Bulgari sits on Jumeirah Bay, a seahorse-shaped private island stitched to the mainland by a single bridge: close enough that Downtown glitters across the water, far enough that you hear the marina rather than the traffic. Designed end to end by Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel, it is Italian craft at Gulf scale: travertine, teak, and a village of just a hundred-odd rooms and villas.
This is the address for guests who want the best thing money buys in Dubai: privacy. It is the smallest, quietest and most discreet of the three: the one repeat visitors choose.
Aperitivo at the Yacht Club as the skyline lights up
The spa's indoor pool: the most beautiful room in Dubai
Dinner at Il Ristorante Niko Romito
A villa garden breakfast without another guest in sight
A villa plunge pool under palms: the register this resort is built in
Palm West Beach from the air, the stretch the resort sits on
Palm Jumeirah, west crescent
One&Only The Palm
The quiet one: low-rise, beach-facing and deliberately small
One&Only The Palm is the answer for guests who want Dubai without the volume. It sits at the far western tip of the Palm, low-rise, Moorish in style, with fewer rooms than most Dubai hotels have suites, and a private beach looking back at the Marina skyline across the water.
Nothing here is trying to be the biggest anything. The pleasure is the quiet: a garden courtyard, a beach that is never crowded, and a boat that will run you across the water if you would rather not drive. Your driver handles the days you do go out.
Fewer than a hundred rooms, in a city of thousand-room resorts
A private beach that is genuinely quiet
Villas with their own pools, without a resort's worth of noise around them
The Burj Al Arab seen across the Madinat Jumeirah canals
The turquoise waterway and palms below the sail
Umm Suqeim, on its own island
Burj Al Arab Jumeirah
The sail: the single most recognisable hotel on earth, and an all-suite one
There is no soft way to describe the Burj Al Arab, so here is the plain one: it stands on a man-made island off Umm Suqeim, it is shaped like a spinnaker, and it is the building the rest of the world pictures when it pictures Dubai. Every room is a duplex suite over two floors.
Staying here is not a room booking, it is the point of the trip. Guests are driven across the private bridge, met at the door, and assigned a butler for the stay. In this package the car that brings you across that bridge is your own for the whole trip, which is the difference between arriving and being delivered.
A duplex suite and a butler, as the entry level
The private bridge, and the arrival that comes with it
The building itself, which needs no explanation anywhere in the world
Burj Khalifa: the Armani occupies the tower's lower and mid floors
The tower from Downtown: the hotel's front door is the world's most famous address
Burj Khalifa, Downtown
Armani Hotel Dubai
The icon: sleep inside the tallest building on Earth
There is exactly one hotel inside the Burj Khalifa, and Giorgio Armani designed it personally: every chair, every fabric, every line of it. The Armani occupies the tower's lower and mid floors: below you, the Dubai Fountain performs on the hour; above you, half a kilometre of building; outside the lift, Dubai Mall without stepping into the heat.
This is the address for guests who want the centre of gravity: Downtown at the door, the fountain show from dinner, and the particular pleasure of telling people where you slept.
The Abu Dhabi waterfront at dusk, Emirates Palace and Etihad Towers along it
Etihad Towers at sunset from the marble plaza opposite
Abu Dhabi Corniche, west end
Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental
The palace: gold, marble and a private beach, on a scale nothing else attempts
Emirates Palace is not a hotel that borrowed the word palace. It was built as one: a kilometre of frontage, 114 domes, a marble atrium you can see the length of, and a private beach curving away from it. Mandarin Oriental now runs it, which added precision to a building that was already spectacular.
This is the anchor of every serious Abu Dhabi package we sell. The Grand Mosque is twenty minutes away, the Louvre is fifteen, and the drive between them is the least interesting part of your day, which is exactly how a package should be arranged.
A private beach at a palace, twenty minutes from the Grand Mosque
Rooms the size most hotels call suites
The atrium, which is worth walking the length of at least once
Abu Dhabi's islands and waterways from the air at golden sunset
A garden resort pool with umbrellas and loungers
Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi
The St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort
The beach resort with the museums up the road: nine kilometres of protected sand
Saadiyat Island is Abu Dhabi's cultural district and its best beach in the same place. The St. Regis sits directly on a protected stretch of sand where hawksbill turtles still nest, with the Louvre Abu Dhabi ten minutes up the road and the rest of the museum quarter rising around it.
It is the most complete Abu Dhabi base we sell: a genuine beach resort that happens to be a short drive from the best cultural half-day in the country. Your driver makes the museum runs, and the beach fills everything in between.
A protected beach where turtles genuinely nest
The Louvre Abu Dhabi ten minutes from your sun lounger
The rare UAE resort where the beach is the natural article, not an import
A sculptural golden dune at dusk: the country the resort sits in
Ghaf trees on the dunes under a starry sky
Dubai desert, Al Marmoom
Bab Al Shams Desert Resort
The desert fort: low mud-brick walls, no skyline, and silence after dark
Bab Al Shams is built as a low desert fort about forty-five minutes inland from Dubai, in the Al Marmoom conservation reserve. There is no skyline, no traffic and, once the sun goes, very little light: the stars over the courtyard are the entire evening entertainment and they are enough.
As one or two nights inside a longer package it changes the shape of the whole trip. Camel rides and falconry happen at the resort, the dunes start at the wall, and your driver brings you back into the city whenever you are ready.
Real desert silence, forty-five minutes from the Burj Khalifa
Stars you cannot see anywhere in the city
A fort that feels like somewhere rather than a hotel with a theme
