The Best Places in the United Arab Emirates

Check-in happens on the 36th floor, which sets the tone immediately. This sleek luxury hotel occupies a skyscraper on Sheikh Zayed Road, with 259 marble-clad rooms that pull back slightly from the building's more dramatic exterior without exactly being modest about it. The Burj Khalifa is nearby, a two-floor spa is inside, and the restaurant options run from Greek to Cantonese, which covers a lot of ground without leaving the building.

The shiny facade of tiny blue mirrors makes this luxury hotel look like it was custom-built to catch the Dubai sun, which it essentially was. Across from the Burj Khalifa and connected to the Dubai Mall by an air-conditioned walkway, it's a sleek, geometry-forward property with plush rooms, an infinity pool ringed by actual grass, and a rooftop bar open until three. The ground-floor patisserie selling croissants is, charmingly, as French as it gets.

The Palm Jumeirah is already a flex, and Andaz leans into it: this is a resort hotel sitting near the top of the frond-shaped island, where the rooms curve like something from a retrofuturist dream and the views swing between city skyline and open sea. The design is playful and a little space-age, the scale is unmistakably Dubai, and there's a Mexican restaurant with a front-row seat to all of it.

The name means "sky" in French, which tracks for a tower standing 377 meters above Dubai Marina, currently the tallest hotel on earth. Over a thousand rooms keep it from feeling intimate, but floor-to-ceiling glass and a restrained contemporary palette make the scale work. The open-air pool hangs at altitude with nothing but city below, and a gap in the tower's structure creates an outdoor perch that is difficult to play it cool about.

A hotel on Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard that deliberately refuses to be a skyscraper, which in Dubai counts as a design statement. The mid-rise layout feels almost village-like, with rooms facing gardens and a pool rather than an infinity edge and the void. Quiet, comfortable, and tasteful without trying too hard, the Michelin Guide Selected Hotels pick also runs a casual food truck out of a vintage Airstream, which is either charming or incongruous depending on your mood.

The minibar is stocked with blueberries and kombucha, the recovery closet with foam rollers and resistance bands, which tells you everything about what kind of hotel this is. SIRO One Za'abeel is Dubai's biohacking-focused answer to a wellness property, with a 900-square-metre gym, sleep-optimised rooms, and menus built around recovery. You don't have to be training for anything to stay here, but you will feel like you should be.

A hotel attached to the world's largest shopping mall that somehow keeps its cool about it. The Burj Khalifa fills most room windows, an air-conditioned bridge connects directly to Dubai Mall, and the interiors go deliberately the other way: blond wood, clean lines, colorful art where the neighborhood would have put gold leaf. The Flo Pool Bar has the Khalifa as a backdrop, which is either very relaxing or very distracting, depending on you.

The trunk of the palm-shaped island, with Yabu Pushelberg interiors and a skyline view over Dubai Marina that explains why the pool deck fills up fast. This is a full-throttle luxury hotel where being seen is half the amenity: the beach club and restaurant circuit draw a crowd that treats both as sport. An Ottoman-inspired spa offers the counterprogram when the scene gets to be a bit much.

Floor-to-ceiling windows face the marina on every one of the 328 rooms, and the glass-walled bathrooms mean the view follows you in. This waterfront hotel sits close enough to Dubai Marina Mall and the beach to feel genuinely connected to the neighborhood, while the 39th-floor Rex Bar and a spa with a rooftop pool give you little reason to leave. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Thirty floors up, the balcony faces the Gulf, and the waterfront promenade is right below. This high-rise beach hotel blends Sofitel's French-accented style with Arabic touches, and it handles both the leisure crowd and the laptop brigade without making either feel like an afterthought. Two restaurants, three bars, a spa, and a pool fill the middle hours, with Jumeirah Beach and the Walk doing the rest.

Sandstone buildings that sink into the dunes rather than announce themselves above them, which is a genuine rarity within the Dubai hospitality universe. Bab Al Shams is a desert resort about an hour outside the city, operated by the same group behind Atlantis but deliberately quieter in register. Rooms lean restrained by local standards, all private terraces and garden or dune views. It holds a Michelin Key. Skew toward families over honeymooners.

A fresh apple lands in your room each day, which tells you something about the Delano's particular brand of studied cool. This design hotel on Bluewaters Island carries the DNA of Ian Schrager and Philippe Starck's South Beach original: dimly lit bar, sunken pool furniture, draped corridors, and 251 rooms dressed in white oak and boucle rather than the regional marble-and-gold default.

The wave-shaped tower has been a fixture on the Jumeirah coastline long enough that Dubai's skyline would look odd without it, and its best rooms frame the Burj Al Arab like a postcard you're actually sleeping inside. This beach resort runs from live-fire Mediterranean cooking on the sand all the way to a French brasserie on the 25th floor with panoramic windows pointed at that famous sail. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Fifteen individually artist-designed rooms tucked into a 19th-century merchants' district that Dubai somehow forgot to demolish. XVA is a boutique hotel, gallery, and vegetarian café folded into one wind-towered building in Al Fahidi, where the alleyways are narrow enough that two people walking abreast is optimistic. Persian arches, palm motifs, and handcrafted textiles do the decorating; no alcohol, but the mint lemonade compensates more than it should.

Golden columns in the lobby, and not in an ironic way. This sprawling Palm Jumeirah resort takes its Ottoman-inspired look seriously, delivering soaring interiors, a private beach, and over four hundred rooms where even the entry-level options come with a round-the-clock butler. Ten restaurants, a hammam, spa, and tennis courts mean you could theoretically never leave, which on a man-made island shaped like a palm tree is arguably the point.

The only hotel sitting directly on Pearl Jumeira's waterfront, Nikki Beach Resort & Spa positions itself as a certain kind of fantasy: Gulf views from every private balcony, five places to eat and drink, beachside cabanas, and villas that come staffed with a round-the-clock host and a personal chef. The brand's motto is "tell only your best friends," which is doing a lot of work in a city where ultra-luxe is basically the baseline. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Twenty standalone villas, each with a private pool, a cinema, an elevator, and a butler, which puts this Al Barsha property in a category where the word "hotel" barely applies. Dark hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling glass, and terrace Jacuzzis give the interiors a cool, unhurried weight. Families on extended stays and executives who need a boardroom share the address without ever crossing paths.

Twenty-one rooms on a Colin Montgomerie golf course, surrounded by lakes and fairways, in a city where hotels typically have more floors than this one has guests. Address Montgomerie is a boutique resort that plays well above its size, with a full spa, three restaurants, and rooms styled with an unusual restraint for Dubai. Non-golfers settle in fine, but the floodlit par-3 course and coaching facilities are the real draw for those keeping score.

The hotel is a glass-tipped pyramid, which in Dubai reads as almost restrained. Raffles delivers the unashamedly classic luxury it's known for across its properties, with every room and suite opening onto a private terrace and panoramic views of the skyline. Services are comprehensive, the five-star comforts are exactly what they should be, and at the apex, the RED Lounge adds Chinese cuisine and cocktails with a view that the original pyramids never quite managed.

The building announces itself as an obelisk, which makes the interior's commitment to French art de vivre a very deliberate bait-and-switch. This Sofitel hotel in Wafi City wears creamy tones, dark wood, and Art Deco detailing throughout its rooms, with Dubai skyline views doing the heavy lifting from there. Brasserie Boulud anchors the dining mix, and the spa layers L'Occitane treatments and a hammam around an outdoor pool.

Three floors of tropical greenery in the middle of DIFC, where the Amazon rainforest aesthetic gets taken very seriously and the bar keeps pace with the dining room. The Latin American menu wanders from sushi to grilled meats, which sounds chaotic but tracks with the Amazon basin's many communities. First-floor tables face the open kitchen; the panoramic terrace is the move for a cocktail before or after.

The pisco bar alone draws a crowd before anyone touches the ceviche menu. This Peruvian restaurant and bar sits inside the Four Seasons' outdoor Restaurant Village, where the room runs loud and candlelit and nobody seems to be eating alone. The kitchen works the Nikkei angle hard, with ceviches in several directions and a sweetcorn meringue pavlova that sounds odd until it doesn't. Cocktail credentials are no afterthought; the bar team placed among the regional top ten in the Spirited Awards.

The glass-brick DJ booth is the first clue that this is not your average hotel bar. Electric Pawn Shop is a neon-lit, music-forward cocktail bar on the ground floor of the H Dubai, dressed up in stainless steel, exposed brick, and a vague dystopian fog. The menu leans Asian-Mediterranean, but the real reason to come is the sound system, which takes itself very seriously, as it should.

The Barcelona original put cocktails inside a fridge; this ninth-floor outpost swapped the fridge for a circus. A cocktail bar inside the Five Luxe JBR, Paradiso Dubai goes big on spectacle: candy stripes, circus motifs, and drinks that arrive as set pieces, one served inside a miniature steam engine under sesame foam, another glowing green thanks to riboflavin and something billed as an electric liqueur. A named spot on The 50 Discovery list.

Two towers connected by an observation deck over Dubai Creek Harbour, which tells you immediately what kind of scale Emaar had in mind. This hotel goes full Dubai in the lobbies, with gold accents, statement chandeliers, and marbled everything, but the 233 rooms and suites pull back to something quieter. The harbor and skyline views from the middle deck are the real argument for choosing it over somewhere more central.

A hotel in Al Jadaf that treats restraint as a design philosophy, which in Dubai is roughly as rare as a quiet roundabout. The Architecture Studio building tempers its hard modernism with Art Deco warmth, and rooms run from the sensibly compact to the 50-square-meter Mega for those who feel the city deserves a response in kind. Rooftop pool, gym, and a restaurant that skips the gold leaf for clean eating. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Low-rise luxury in a city that treats altitude as a personality trait, Vida Creek Harbour is a hotel that keeps things unfussy while the towers of Dubai Creek Harbour crowd around it. Neutral tones, warm furniture, and arabesque detailing on the exterior and throughout the interiors give it a grounded feel. The Michelin Guide includes it among its selected hotels, and the skyline views do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Rooms here face the Gulf of Oman, so you fall asleep to actual waves rather than a white-noise app. Palace Beach Resort Fujairah is a mid-size beachfront resort on the Fujairah coast, about an hour from Dubai, with a private beach, a pool, and a handful of restaurants keeping things self-contained. The interiors lean breezy and light-filled rather than grand, which suits the barefoot pace of the place better than marble columns would.

The tower leans. Not a little, either: Capital Gate tilts at an angle that makes the Leaning Tower of Pisa look timid, and Andaz has filled the interior with art, warm materials, and a 19th-floor pool deck rather than let the spectacle do all the work. It's a luxury boutique hotel, so expect Hyatt-level service alongside the gallery space and spa. The Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre is next door, the airport fifteen minutes away.

About twenty miles outside Dubai, where construction cranes give way to polo grounds, this resort sits in a pocket of genuine green. Villas come with private pools, the larger residences have nine-foot privacy walls, and the spa runs Kerstin Florian treatments. The polo angle is the real draw: riding lessons, matches, and tennis for when you've had enough of the ponies.

The W Abu Dhabi sits astride the Formula One racecourse on Yas Island, its glass-and-steel shell running a synchronized LED light show after dark that makes the building look like it's auditioning for something. This is a full-throttle luxury hotel: edgy, color-saturated rooms, suites that scale up to genuinely extravagant, a multi-cuisine flagship restaurant, and a wellness center with a lounge overlooking the track, in case you like your massages with a side of motorsport.

Seven restored manor houses form the bones of this 65-room luxury hotel in the heart of Sharjah's heritage district, stitched together with newer buildings in a way that feels less renovation project and more quiet reinvention. Rooms blend minimalist Asian calm with Arabic textiles and warm wood, and the spa runs separate wings for women and men with hammam rituals on the menu. Creek Harbour views back the Japanese and Korean restaurant next door.

A steel-and-glass structure by an Italian architect sits among reflecting pools in Ajman, the smallest and quietest of the Emirates. This beach resort lines villas along the shore, runs a long main pool through the property, and offers suites with vast bathrooms and open-air showers. One restaurant employs a fish sommelier, which is either charming or a lot, depending on your afternoon. Flamingos work the mangroves just beyond the property fence.

Five rooms, a saltwater pool, and a spa with no staff, just a sequence of spaces, a shower walk, an herbal sauna, a salt inhalation room, you moving through them at your own pace. This small desert retreat sits less than an hour east of Dubai, where Bedouin form meets precise modernist design. The rooms are compact but considered, and the absence of bustle is the whole point. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Fifty-one floors above the Palm, this bar pulls from Japan, Brazil, and Peru simultaneously, which sounds like a fever dream until you're holding a passionfruit-spiked cocktail with disco balls spinning overhead. The crowd dresses up and the DJs show up ready; on Thursdays, samba dancers take over entirely. It's a lot, in the way Dubai tends to be a lot, and the view gives everyone permission to lean into it.

The rooms here are styled around a concept that folds art, fashion, and retail into a resort stay, which sounds like marketing until you're poolside on a man-made island in the Arabian Gulf. This all-inclusive on Al Marjan Island runs ten stories, 257 rooms and suites, several with private plunge pools, plus multiple restaurants, an adults-only pool bar, and a standalone beach club about ninety minutes from Dubai.

Tented plunge-pool villas sit at the edge of the Arabian Gulf, their canopied ceilings and flowing drapes borrowing from Bedouin fishing-village tradition rather than the usual eco-resort playbook. This beachfront resort in Ras Al Khaimah runs as a fully self-contained stay, with private cabanas and daybeds outside each villa. Snorkeling and diving fill the days, and the neighboring desert sister property lends its spa when the sea loses its novelty.

On the Gulf of Oman side of the UAE, far from the Dubai crowds, the Fairmont Fujairah is a 181-room beachside resort where every room looks straight out to sea over the marina. The spa runs deep, the pools are plural, and snorkeling is on the itinerary if you want it. Dining leans maritime, with a seafood-forward restaurant and a kitchen doing a MediterrAsian thing that sounds like a portmanteau but apparently works.

Each villa has its own pool and outdoor shower, with the Hajar Mountains behind you and the Gulf of Oman out front. This all-villa resort on the UAE's quieter east coast sits a long way from the Dubai spectacle, which is rather the point. Whitewashed interiors carry Arabic design details without going overboard, and Snoopy Island's snorkeling reefs are just offshore. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Thirty villas scattered across a savannah, where the neighbors are more likely to be gazelles than other guests. This private-island resort on Sir Bani Yas pairs game drives and wildlife spotting with horse riding, watersports, and archery, so no one runs out of reasons to leave the villa, or excuses to stay in it. The spa draws on Arab beauty traditions, and four restaurants cover everything from South African grilling to Mediterranean.

A nature reserve five miles off Abu Dhabi doubles as a resort, which sounds like a press release but turns out to be accurate. Anantara runs it with the island-mellow ease of their Thai properties, so the scale is unmistakably Emirati (rooms large, suites lavish) but the mood is looser than the mainland norm. Game drives and trail hikes sit alongside the pool and spa, and you fly in on a small prop plane, which sets the tone nicely.

The circular bar on the 44th floor of Grosvenor House earns the name, with views over the marina that make it easy to forgive the champagne-bar origins and the flashier crowd that came with them. This is a cocktail bar now, properly, with lounge rooms off to the sides for anyone who wants to sit somewhere quieter and pretend they planned ahead. The jetset still shows up, but so does everyone else.

The bar at this Japanese restaurant-bar in the Monarch Hotel runs impossibly narrow, which somehow makes it feel more like a scene than an inconvenience. Regulars wedged in shoulder-to-shoulder are usually debating which large-format bottle to order next, but the bartenders behind the counter are quietly serious about what they're doing. A high-energy cocktail bar with a mezzanine-level address and prices to match the postcode.