Dubai’s 7-Star Hotel?

Dubai is a bit of a luxury palace. Ridiculously wealthy, fabulously artificial and just that little bit eccentric, it’s sort of like an emirate version of Joan Collins. The wealth is everywhere you look, from the ebullient oil barons to the man-made islands you can’t really escape the fact that this is a place that people go to show off their wonderfully extraordinary lives. It’s not just the people that like to show off their wealth though, the hotels positively adore it. Standing proud and tall against an azure skyline like erect monuments to their makers own, er shortcomings, they are often a remarkable sight to behold. One, literally, towers above them all, though, the Burj Al Arab, quiet often thought of as the most luxurious hotel in the world.

At 1,053 feet tall, it’s the fourth tallest hotel in the world and in the odd eccentric way that Dubai trully excels, it’s designed to look like the sail of a ship. Inside, it’s something of a pauper’s dream.  The interior lobby is plated in gold leafa and every guest service. Of course, the real sign of luxury isn’t in the bedroom, it’s in the crapper. Each toilet  has full-size Hermes amenities. Then there’s the bedroom, sure we could go on about all the luxurious surroundings, the rotating four poster bed, but there’s really only one thing that people care about when they’re about to hit the hay; how many pillow options do they have? The answer is 13, now personally this seems like both an unfortunate amount for the superstious and a questionably large choice.  How many things can a pillow do?

Subtely really isn’t this hotel’s kind of thing. Fireworks announce the arrival of VVIPs  – VIPs presumably just get a polite handshake while regular important people are probably lucky to come away without getting a swift kick to the kidneys -while a line of white Rolls Royce’s sit in the forecourts. Of course, this is probably where the seven star myth comes from, apparently you can’t get past five, so in realtiy this was some very successful myth-making on behalf of the hotel or maybe it was its VVIP guests, after all who wants to stay in a crappy old five-star anyway.