Best Luxury Hotels in the United Arab Emirates
Five properties dividing between Dubai's engineered coastline, artificial islands and record-scale ambition, and the empty-quarter desert an hour or two inland, where the built environment recedes almost entirely. Chosen against the same four criteria throughout, not ranked by price.
The United Arab Emirates’ luxury hotel identity runs through two almost entirely separate landscapes, and this collection is built around that split: Dubai’s coast, and the desert that starts less than two hours inland.
For Palm Jumeirah
One&Only The Palm, Atlantis The Royal, and Bulgari Resort Dubai all occupy variations of the same artificial-island geography, but read very differently: One&Only’s Moorish restraint, Atlantis’s cantilevered scale and celebrity-chef density, and Bulgari’s Italian sensibility on its own seahorse-shaped island. Any one works as a beach-focused Dubai stay; the choice comes down to how much architectural spectacle a reader actually wants.
For the desert
Al Maha, inside the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve and built around Arabian oryx conservation, and Qasr Al Sarab, deep in the Liwa Desert’s Empty Quarter dunes, both offer the genuine counterpoint to the coast: low-built lodges, real distance from the city, and a stillness Dubai’s skyline can’t provide.
The list
5 hotels in this collection
Palm Jumeirah, United Arab Emirates
One&Only The Palm
A Moorish-Andalusian manor on the tip of Palm Jumeirah's West Crescent, built around a two-Michelin-star French dining room and four of Dubai's only private-pool beach villas.
From $650 per night
Palm Jumeirah, United Arab Emirates
Atlantis The Royal
Six stacked towers, a 90-metre sky pool bridging them at height, and 795 rooms and suites arranged like a deliberately imperfect skyline on Palm Jumeirah.
From $650 per night
Jumeirah Bay Island, United Arab Emirates
Bulgari Resort Dubai
An Italian jeweller's idea of the Arabian Gulf, built on a seahorse-shaped island with its own marina, a two-Michelin-starred dining room, and 101 rooms that all face water.
From $950 per night
Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, United Arab Emirates
Al Maha, A Luxury Collection Desert Resort & Spa
A fenced private reserve of freestanding, sand-colored tented suites where the return of the Arabian oryx to the wild is the whole point of the stay, not a footnote to it.
From $950 per night
Liwa Desert, Empty Quarter, United Arab Emirates
Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara
A fortress that appears to rise out of the dunes of the Empty Quarter, built so that the world's largest sand desert, not the hotel, remains the point of the stay.
From $368 per night