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Hot Hotels: W Dubai Al Habtoor City

Starwood’s latest offers 30 floors and 356 rooms of dazzling design.

Poolside at W Dubai

John Laurie

Starwood’s latest offers 30 floors and 356 rooms of dazzling design.

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“What’s new, what’s next” is the catchphrase of Starwood’s W Hotels, and its newest property in Dubai delivers in spades. Cleverly designed by Singapore-based Silverfox Studios to be both cool and hot, W Dubai Al Habtoor City is more than welcoming.

W Dubai’s lobby.

The cool comes from the contrast of curvaceous white guestrooms, bringing to mind spaceship pods, and public spaces of eye-catching colour: the lobby features dazzling graphic lines while the hallway carpets have woven images of electrical currents, referencing the constant buzz of excited travellers.

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Gyoza at Namu restaurant.

The hotness is apparent in the evenings, 30 floors up, when the city’s young expats join guests and resident DJs at the W Lounge, or at its classy Japanese-Korean restaurant Namu. Both face the Dubai Water Canal, a feat of engineering that winds in a horseshoe shape through the city to the sea.

This is a hotel with its own language. The pool is named simply Wet; the gym is called Fit; and the 356 rooms have names such as Fabulous, Spectacular and Extreme Wow. Which, I assure you, they are.

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W Dubai’s Fantastic suite.

W Dubai is one of three hotels in the Al Habtoor complex on the ocean side of the city, about 2.5 kilometres from the landmark Burj Khalifa tower. In contrast to neighbouring hotels St Regis Dubai and The Westin Dubai, W’s target is what hotel manager Justin Kim describes as “the disruptors” in the Lady Gaga-Mark Zuckerberg mould.

Rooms from $280. W Dubai Al Habtoor City, Sheikh Zayed Rd, Dubai, wdubaialhabtoorcity.com

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