Taking luxury to new heights – JW Marriott Marquis Hotel / Dubai / UAE

This landmark hotel become one of the regions most desirable destinations, offering a spectrum of facilities for the most discerning travellers.
House & Hotel Magazine is glad to be here. Elevated above Dubais skyline, on Sheik Zayed Road.

Ready to explore the architectural ostentation. JW Marriott Marquis Hotel, the world’s tallest free-standing hotel where the only way you could hear the call to prayer would be to have it put through to your in-room telephone.

Yes, it works we tried it.

The 77-storey hotel in Business Bay rises 355 metres, with its cloud-piercing spire soaring another 50 metres, making it the world’s tallest hotel over the 333-metre Rose Rayhaan by Rotana, also in Dubai.

Tower #1 of the JW Marriott has 806 rooms with the top floor occupied by the Vault, a nice resto, one of more than a dozen restaurants and bars. It’s the first of two completed twin towers of the new complex, with another to go. The hotel’s beautiful swimming pool is located on the mezzanine level between the sixth and seventh floors, with views of Burj Khalifa.

By the way, the world’s tallest building.

The one and only drawback of staying in the world’s tallest hotel is you seem to spend nearly as much time travelling in the glass-fronted lifts as you do in your spacious state-of-the-art room, with its interior of calming dark timbers, leather bed-head inserts and stone finishes.

In every room you have a perfect view and the bathroom was luxury like in every Marriott.

The JW Marriott is a stylish business hotel with a fantastic lounge off the lobby that’s perfect for a drink and is an ideal base for exploring the city’s multitude of malls such as Dubai Mall, go for indoor ski-ing or enjoy the Mall of the Emirates.

We enjoyed it very much.

Rich Dubai: 4 kids when they check in at the Burj Al Arab, they get the golden ipad to play with.

Hmm.

We enjoyed it for a while and prefered to take took the “Dubai Metro” to see to the old city.

Back in the old city, Dubai appears to be recognising that after its massive transformative development in the desert, it needs to pause and consider its past -what remains of it – since man and woman cannot live on multiple cross-town Prada, Gucci outlets alone.

As a result, more private places or boutique hotels like e.g. the XVA are starting to open.

To be honest, I love the luxury style but there is charm in its old quarter and small hotels.

Al-Fahidi, part of the Bastakia Quarter, is like a tiny island of the past in Dubai’s overwhelmingly futuristic sea.

The small hotel, built in the traditional Arabian mud-brick style, the antithesis of the gauche and oversize buildings.
It is one of the smallest hotels in Dubai. The neighbourhood dates to less than a century ago when the city was a modest and obscure Arabian fishing port.

In one of the courtyards, which doubles as a cafe selling simple dishes such as kebab, soups, salads and drinks such as juices and shakes, it’s nearly as cool as in the clouds back at the JW Marriott Marquis.

The hotel is a private Arab place where guest are entertained, with its own wind tower and twin courtyards.

Al-Fahidi is the part of Dubai on a human scale, where you can walk a distance without being inside a huge shopping centre. When they designed the new Dubai they made it big, with different small cities like the Internet City, but here you can stroll around.

Near to the hotel are the labyrinthine souks, or bazaars, of the old town. The gold souk alone boasts 300 outlets, all selling the precious metal, with modern electronic screens the size of a Coke machine placed along the passageways indicating the latest gold prices.

The fleet of abras, or water taxis, on Dubai Creek can make an enjoyable way to explore the old part of the city. On the creek you get a sense Dubai was once a sensible place with modest ambitions, with buildings from the 1960s and ’70s at a sane height lining the creek on the Deira area.

But Dubai is the place to be, because of places like the JW Marriott Marquis and it wouldn’t be Dubai without its modern side.

Lucky to have a liquor store ID of a friend who is working in Dubai, we enjoyed it so much to have a peaceful drink on our own.

Relax in style and take luxury to new heights sweet JW Marriott.