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I recently stayed in a luxury hotel that boasted 4½ stars.

I meant to have asked them how they fell so agonisingly short of that Holy Grail of 5 stars, but it went clean out of my head. A couple of extra bottles in the mini-bar, perhaps, a better range of toiletries, free airport shuttle …?

But, of course, these days there are some luxury hotels that laugh at 5 stars – they’re in the 6 or 7 league (the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, for example). There are even rumours of a 10-star luxury hotel planned for somewhere in the Middle East.

There is, in fact, no universal star system. Rating methods can vary from global region to global region, country to country and, in many cases, within countries.

Some in the industry believe this star–rating inflation is more for the benefit of the luxury hotels than their guests. “This is only done for prestige,” said Dr Ghassan Aidi, President of the International Hotels and Restaurants Association. “They want to be apart from the four or five stars existing. They call themselves 6 stars, 7 stars, 10 stars. No such thing exists. Five stars is already too much.”

The ultimate goal would be to develop a unified star-rating system that the consumer could trust. That, though, would be a tall order because different cultures around the world value different things.

by Andy Moreton, with acknowledgements to Rajan Datar and Affan Chowdhry of BBC News online.

It was way back in October 2008 that I reported on the campaign to free Sammy the Shark from her tank in the lobby of Atlantis, the spectacular luxury hotel in Dubai.

I hear now that she’s finally been returned to the waters of the Gulf, from where she was first picked up.

The freckled whale shark, which is an internationally protected species, was a top crowd puller, but also attracted unwelcome publicity for the hotel after animal rights groups demanded her release. A Facebook campaign attracted 26,000 entries. The American actress Pamela Anderson was among the celebrity lobbyists who branded the shark’s capture cruel, and pushed for her to be set free from the luxury hotel in Dubai.

However, Atlantis said all its marine life was cared for to the highest standard and that valuable research had been carried out while the creature had been in captivity.

It said Sammy had been tagged for monitoring and research before being set free.

by Andy Moreton

Book a luxury hotel in Dubai city through Luxique – we have 11 of the very best.

Just over a month after it was formally opened, the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, has been closed to the public.

The observation deck on the building’s 124th floor is currently out of action because of unspecified technical problems. The owners said they were carrying out ‘maintenance and upgrade’.

One report says about 60 people were stranded there for more than an hour four days ago because of a power supply fault. They were brought down by service elevators.

Tickets to the observation deck had been a sell-out since the opening day and it’s thought this unexpectedly high traffic contributed to the problems. Guests who hold tickets will be offered the option to re-book or receive an immediate refund.

by Andy Moreton

See the wonder that is Dubai – Luxique offers a selection of a dozen of the finest luxury hotels in Dubai City.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone organised a parachute jump from the world’s tallest building – the Dubai tower I wrote about last week.

Omar Al Hegelan and Nasser Al Niyadi, two experienced base jumpers, leapt from 2,716 feet (828m), taking just one-and-a-half minutes to reach the ground at speeds up to 136 mph.

Al Niyadi, who already holds a world record for the first Mount Everest sky dive, described the feat as ‘the best experience ever’.

“When we were at the top of the building I was thinking ‘this is crazy’. I was a little nervous but I wanted to jump from the highest tower in the world to record an achievement for my family and for my country,” he said.

Originally named the Burj Dubai, the tower was renamed Burj Khalifa in tribute to Dubai’s financial rescuer – its oil-rich neighbour, Abu Dhabi (Sheikh Khalifa is its President).

When news of the sky-dive appeared online, one message board contributor suggested:

“If its economy continues as it is, it will not be long before we see the royal family of Dubai jumping from the top … without a parachute.”

by Andy Moreton

See the over-the-top phenomenon that is Dubai – Luxique offers a selection of a dozen of the finest luxury hotels in Dubai City.

Even though it recently hit something of a financial black hole, Dubai continues to astound.

Its latest contribution to the wonders of the world is the tower called Burj Dubai, which has just been officially opened. At 2,716 feet (828 metres) high, it’s the tallest building on earth – its spire can be seen 60 miles away.

Constructed with 28,000 glass panels, it has 160 habitable floors. It sets the record for the highest occupied floor, the highest observation deck – on the 124th floor – and the highest mosque.

The opening ceremony included a spectacular firework and light show around the tower, while a screen revealed its exact height which had previously been kept secret.

Burj Dubai will be home to about a thousand luxury apartments, 49 floors of offices and eventually a 160-room Armani-branded hotel.

Steve Rose, writing in Monday’s Guardian newspaper in the UK, commented:

“We’re going to need a new word. The Burj Dubai doesn’t scrape the sky; it pierces it, like a slender silver needle, half a mile high. It’s only because Dubai never has any clouds that we can even see the tower’s top. And, judging by the images released so far, the view is more like looking out of a plane than a building. It has made reality a little less real.”

by Andy Moreton

Luxique offers you a choice of a dozen of the finest luxury hotels in Dubai, including the world famous Burj Al Arab, the award-winning Jumeirah Beach and one of the newest luxury hotels, the Grand Hyatt Dubai.

Dubai has become the first Gulf state to have its own metro (subway) system, but being Dubai it’s all a bit different from London or Paris.

For a start, there are three classes of carriage. Oil executives and sheikhs will be in ‘gold’ – with wide leather seats, on-board wi-fi and a front-of-train view. The rest – including tourists and migrant workers – will ride in standard, while there’s a third area for women and children.

The Dubai city metro cost $7.6 billion (£4.6 billion) to build. It has one line – Red – open at the moment, with another, Green, to follow in the summer of next year. It will eventually become the world’s longest driverless train system with more than 43 miles of track.

The BBC’s correspondent in Dubai, Julia Wheeler, says that one of the main challenges will be to persuade motorists, who are used to subsidised fuel and the privacy of air-conditioned comfort, to swap their cars for a mass transit system. With daytime temperatures regularly exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 F), this is not straightforward.

Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, saw the project as a vital piece of infrastructure that could revitalise the city. “It’s the start of something,” he told reporters on the eve of the project’s launch. “It is like when the first plane flew for Emirates [the airline] and the first container ship arrived into port.”

by Andy Moreton

Luxique offers a choice from a dozen of the finest luxury hotels in Dubai, including the world famous Burj Al Arab, the award-winning Jumeirah Beach and one of the newest luxury hotels, the Grand Hyatt Dubai.

One of the most famous cruise liners in the world, the QE2, is on her final voyage before she comes a floating hotel – in Dubai, where else?!

The Grande Dame of the seas had a slightly inauspicious entry into her home port of Southampton when she ran into a sandbank at dawn. But she was pulled off quite easily and arrived just 25 minutes late.

“No one on board was injured. A lot of people will have been in bed when it happened and wouldn’t have noticed,” said a spokesman for the owners, Cunard.

The Duke of Edinburgh was at Southampton to lead the farewell ceremonies for the ship, which has carried more than two-and-a-half million passengers since being launched by the Queen in 1967. It served as a hospital ship during the Falklands War in 1982.

Tickets for this last voyage were quickly snapped up, with the highest-priced berths going for around £28,000 ($41,000).
With the Queen Mary 2 now the flagship of the Cunard fleet, and with other vessels due to join, the company announced last year that the QE2 would be sold for £50 million ($73 million).

She’ll reach Dubai on November 26 and be handed over to Nakheel, part of the Dubai World company, which created the planet’s largest man-made island, the Palm Jumeirah.

After refurbishment over the next few months, the ship will dock permanently at a specially constructed berth to add yet another astonishing feature to an island that’s fast becoming one of the wonders of the modern world.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique offers the best rates at a dozen superb luxury hotels in Dubai.

Forget ‘Free Willy’ – the cry in Dubai has been ‘Free Sammy!’

Sammy the Shark has been the star attraction for several weeks in a huge tank in the lobby of Dubai’s spectacular new luxury hotel, Atlantis.

But the 13-foot whale shark is apparently a juvenile and a protected species and environmentalists have been waging a campaign against the hotel’s state-owned developers to have her removed. Newspapers, radio stations and schools joined the fray and there was even a petition on the social network, Facebook, signed by 8,000 people.

The hotel has maintained that it rescued the shark off the Dubai coast and that it’s been nursing Sammy back to health. However, former employees have told the local press that capturing a whale shark was always part of the hotel’s plan to provide an added tourist attraction.

Now, the UAE’s Minister for the Environment, Rashid Ahmad bin Fahad, has stepped in, saying the shark will be set free and returned to the sea.

Local journalists say the decision to release Sammy came as a surprise to even her staunchest supporters, highlighting how local sensibilities in the UAE are changing. This is in part because Dubai is attracting growing numbers of expats concerned about the environment.

by Andy Moreton

See the phenomenon that is Dubai – Luxique offers a selection of a dozen of the finest luxury hotels in Dubai.

Nothing in Dubai is done modestly and if you’ve built a £1 billion ($1.8 billion) resort, you want a launch party to match.

So the flamboyant South African hotelier, Sol Kerzner, is laying on a shindig that’s so extravagant, organisers reckon it will be seen from space!

The Atlantis hotel and resort stands on the Palm Jumeirah, a man-made island complex off the Dubai coast which has been built to resemble a palm tree when seen from above. The first guests arrive on September 24th, but the grand opening is not until November 20th.

The 2,000 people invited to the launch will be Hollywood stars, heads of state and billionaire businessmen. They’ll be entertained by Kylie Minogue and there’ll be a fireworks display masterminded by the experts behind the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.
Even the invitations are collectors’ items – each is studded with hundreds of pounds’ worth of Swarovski crystals. The total bill for this ‘party to end all parties’ will be in the region of £15 million ($27 million).

Atlantis is a joint enterprise between Kerzner International and the Nakheel Corporation, which is controlled by the Dubai Royal Family. It has 1,500 rooms, including The Lost Chambers Suites, which have underwater views of the lagoon.

Luxique can’t offer you the Atlantis – yet – but we do have a dozen superb luxury Dubai hotels for you to choose from, including the world-renowned Burj Al Arab.

by Andy Moreton

In the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, magazine writer Andie Anderson sets out purposely to offload a new boyfriend by committing the worst possible dating sins. She buys matching clothes for the two of them, phones up his mother and asks for his baby photos, crashes his poker game and starts moving her toiletries into his bathroom.
The moral of the story is that romantic gestures should take into account the stage of the relationship. In the first flush, you should avoid anything that implies you are thinking too far into the future. Men can make the same mistake, too, by buying outrageously sexy underwear in those early courting days or, at the other extreme, being too comfortable with a woman and taking her to a football game with his buddies on Valentine’s Day.
For the guys, even some of the reliable Valentine’s stand-bys might be suspect. Flowers? (maybe she’s allergic); candy? (probably on a diet); a CD? (are you absolutely certain she likes Meatloaf?). The fail-safe is always, always the romantic (and, ideally secret) getaway. Luxique.com can help you choose a luxury hotel or a boutique hotel – something right out of the ordinary. Picture it – cocktails in a shared spa bath, his and hers fluffy white bathrobes, rose petals on the pillows …
So … think Valentine’s Day, think Paris. Or is that a cliché these days? Apparently not. Every survey you read insists that it remains Europe’s most romantic city by a distance. You probably did the 2-star pension in your student days, so head for the luxury of the Hotel de Crillon, a palace commissioned in 1758 by Louis XV. Let’s face it, if it was good enough for Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna among others, you might like it there too. One lucky lady from south-east England whose boyfriend proposed to her there on Valentine’s Day said: “The Crillon treated us like royalty and went out of their way to make the two days absolutely unforgettable.”
There can be no more romantic gesture than Shah Jahan’s 17th century 20-year labour of love to his beloved late wife Mumtaz – the magnificent Taj Mahal. Many cities in India have a romantic aura, but perhaps the pick is Udaipur in Rajasthan. If you’ve more than a weekend to spare, you’ll love the 18th century Taj Lake Palace, a fairytale of white marble and mosaic that shimmers over four acres on the calm waters of Lake Pichola. Parts of the James Bond film, Octopussy, were filmed there. You can have dinner on a ceremonial barge and be pampered by staff dressed in immaculate tunics who will treat you like a maharajah. “An exquisitely exotic spot,” said a New Yorker. “It should be on your ‘before I die’ list.”
New York itself may be bright and brash, but it has its romantic side – for instance, a picnic in Central Park, a walk hand-in-hand over the Brooklyn Bridge or ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center. But many Americans, it seems, would prefer to head down to the Hawaiian islands if love’s on their mind. Who could blame them when you have a paradise such as the Four Seasons Maui at Wailea? Rooms are furnished in a contemporary Hawaiian design and there are amazing places to share views of the ocean and the sunset. Apart from the facilities and services you’d expect from a top name like Four Seasons, there’s a world class spa and an impressive art collection. “Wow, this was a truly memorable stay – the personal attention was impeccable,” said a visitor from Atlanta.

OK, I’ve whetted your appetite, just one more suggestion before I let you loose on our luxury hotel website to make your choice. The Burj Al Arab in Dubai has been called an ‘Arabian Nights Fantasy.’ With its famous design resembling a billowing sail, it’s surrounded by choreographed colour sculptures of water and fire.
There are 202 duplex suites, the largest a substantial 780 square metres and all featuring remotely-controlled lighting, curtains and air conditioning. You get a 42-inch plasma screen, a choice of 13 pillows and, if you and your credit card are up to it, a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce shopping experience. Nick from Seattle said: “They say this is the only 7-star hotel in the world and now I know why!”
There have been many surveys about what makes a romantic trip a success. Ocean views, big comfy bed, great food and discreet service usually make the top ten. But up there at number one is generally: ‘quality time with the one I love.’ Enjoy!

by Andy Moreton