Wanneer je aan Dubai denkt, denk je natuurlijk aan het Burj Al Arab hotel, want dit hotel is het icoon van Dubai! Het hotel aan het Jumeirah strand is gebouwd in de vorm van een enorme dhow, een lokaal zeilschip, dat klaar ligt om de zee op te varen. Het hotel is gebouw op een kunstmatig eiland op ongeveer 300 meter van het strand wat het nog bijzonderder maakt en het Burj Al Arab is het op drie na hoogste gebouw ter wereld. Bijna iedereen die Dubai bezoekt neemt een foto met het Burj Al Arab op de achtergrond als herinnnering aan Dubai!
You probably already know that the Burj Al Arab Hotel wasn’t voted the world’s most luxurious hotel on multiple occasions for no reason. You can easily see its architecture is positively royal. You likely noticed its location on its own artificial island near Jumeirah Beach. This puts it in one of the most beautiful places in the world. You should also know that the service of the staff is every bit as luxurious as the hotel’s manufacture itself. Finally, you may not have known that Burj Al Arab Hotel is the third tallest building in the world. For your privacy, it also offers check-in of a discreet variety; though most luxurious locales are privy to that kind of thing. Not every hotel has a private reception on every single floor, however! Burj Al Arab Hotel does.
It’s not just exceptionally royal architecture, luxury, and views of Dubai that will recommend this hotel to you, though. As well, there are a bevy of bars and restaurants throughout the behemoth, all with exceptional service, views, and amenities. When’s the last time you went to a restaurant and took in a view of the Arabian Gulf that encompasses Dubai and extends from the floor to the ceiling? When was the last time you had a view like that from the twenty-seventh floor of a hotel built on its own island? Said island is just under a thousand feet from the coast–basically, if you could tip the hotel on its side, its top would overlap the beach.
Tom Wright, who eventually co-founded WKK architects, is the man responsible for designing Dubai’s vanguard hotel. It was a five year construction project which began in 1994 and was not completed until 1999. The idea was that, in the end, the hotel would resemble the sail of a traditional Arabian craft which is known as a “dhow”. To accomplish this effect, the hotel is constructed in two massive wings in a sort of “V”/”U” formation, the center of which is made up of a massive atrium. You may be reminded of the Sydney Opera House of Australia, and it makes sense: both the Sydney Opera House and the Burj Al Arab hotel have similar sweeping, curved architecture which is immediately identifiable from a long distance and near a body of water.
While the building may be over a thousand feet in height, it only has 202 separate rooms–you’re definitely going to get your privacy! The smallest of the rooms is just under 2,000 square feet. The largest room is 8,400 square feet; or bigger than 99% of houses in the world. Do you want to stay in that sweet suite? Well, you can; you’ve just got to be willing to spend some $18,700 per night.
While you may be surprised to discover the staff strongly discourage this rating, the Burj Al Arab Hotel is so downright exceptional that at least one British journalist had a stay and coined the term. Here’s an article on that.
If you’d like to see what it must have been like to be in a palace at the top of its game in the 1700s or 1800s, strangely, this hotel in Dubai may be the best way to do just that. While it certainly has nothing European about it, the same kind of money has made its construction possible, and so similar ideals permeate the space. If you’ve got the money, a night in the Burj Al Arab Hotel is worth every penny.
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