Is This The World’s Most Decadent Hotel Suite?

Dubai is booming. Expats are flocking and Beyonce has been rocking at Atlantis The Royal, the city’s hottest hotel. Olivia Falcon checks in for a tour of The Royal Mansion, probably the world’s most decadent hotel suite.

Dubai: Inside Atlantis The Royal’s Very Best Suite

Dubai might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s hard to be a grouch when your chai latte is served in Dolce & Gabbana-printed china along with a pistachio and praline flan pâtissier by award winning pastry chef Christophe Devoille on the side. I’m scouting the lobby of Atlantis The Royal, watching the theatre of new arrivals come past the glass water walls (with great balls of fire that roll up a vast atrium like dragon’s breath) and around an 11 metre-tall polished silver sculpture of water droplets. There definitely doesn’t appear to be any cost-of-living crisis here.

I hadn’t visited the City of Gold for ten years, and from my Emirates airline seat, I was staggered by the scale of the glittering sprawl – the Blade Runner skyline that, when I last visited, seemed like a Disneyland pop up had gone nuclear. Rows of super yachts in the harbours make Monaco look like the Dartmouth Sailing club, and on the ground, the slick motorway network feels like you’re on a Tron super car circuit. Heading onto The Palm, the iconic land mass that’s cut like topiary into the Arabian sea, I pass the famous pink Atlantis, The Palm Hotel and catch my first glimpse of its younger, more stylish-looking sister Atlantis The Royal, the city’s hot hangout for those who want to be seriously spoilt, which perches like a glittering Jenga puzzle on the edge of the beach.

La Mar by Gaston Acurio

A night in an average room here costs around £1,000, but of all the 760 rooms, none of them are average. Offering views of either a magnificent fountain show (the largest in the Middle East) that runs nightly with fire flares against the neon skyline or the Arabian Gulf, this is the kind of place with pillow menus (Buckwheat pillows? Who knew…) and loos that whirr, purr and blow dry your bum on command.

For me, the litmus test of a hotel is its breakfast and Gastronomy, and Atlantis The Royal’s Wonka-worthy breakfast buffet doesn’t disappoint. I was very grateful to have stopped taking Ozempic three weeks prior to this trip as each meal is more decadent than the last. This is home to a Michelin starred greatest hits collection: Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Nobu By The Beach and La Mar, an exquisite Peruvian eatery by chef Gaston Acurio where we had probably the best meal of our lives.

Awaken Spa

While my husband lay supine by the family pool in a food coma and our teenagers hurtled round the adjoining Aquaventure World (guests at the Atlantis The Royal get free access), as a beauty editor, I was keen to check out the spa offering. I signed up for some biohacking tweakments at Aeon, a cutting edge Longevity clinic, and then headed for a hammam and massage at the hotel’s sumptuous Awaken spa. Here, I rotated around the charcoal sauna, salt cave and hydrotherapy pool before flopping onto a heated bed for a Chakra balance massage, which was done with tuning forks and oils chosen according to their vibrational energy. All the spa staff are highly intuitive and have reiki training, and the spa menu runs the gamut of grounding treatments from ‘The Local List’ that features the spa’s own Awaken product range championing local ingredients; the Date Seed Body scrub or Gulf Sea Salt and Moringa Seed Infusion are not to be missed.

Scrubbed, buffed and shiny, I jumped in a private elevator 18 floors up to the hotel’s Sky Bridge for a sneak peek of The Royal Mansion, a four bedroom duplex with a private terrace and infinity pool that doesn’t list its price (although, on enquiring, don’t expect change out of around £100,000 per night). This is where Beyonce, Jay-Z and family decamped for the hotel’s inaugural New Year’s Eve party in 2023. Staff build up an FBI-like profile of Royal Mansion guests’ wants and wishes before they arrive, including which side of the bed they like sleeping on so the Frette pillowcases, towels and bathrobes can be monogrammed; in-room entertainment has been taken up a notch with a Louis Vuitton ping pong table, Baccarat crystal chess set, a cinema room with wall-sized screen and industrial-sized kitchens where staff from Heston Blumenthal can whip up a bespoke dinner party with an ice cream trolley smoking with liquid nitrogen.

The Royal Mansion

For after dinner revelries, a visit to Cloud 22, an adult only infinity pool on top of the skybridge with floating Dolce and Gabbana sunbeds and DJ booth is a must for some world-class people watching. On departure, I ask the PR team about the hotel’s star rating. ‘Setting a bar above the rest of the market, Atlantis The Royal is in a class of its own. Call it a new category.’ And I have to say, I agree. It’s a super star.

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