Abu Dhabi’s hotels sort themselves by island, and the islands are not interchangeable. Saadiyat is beach and museums. Yas is motorsport and theme parks. Al Maryah is business and shopping. The Corniche is the old power address. Choosing the wrong one does not ruin a trip, but it does add forty minutes to every day of it.
The Corniche, and the palace
Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental is the reference point and, arguably, a national monument that happens to take bookings. It opened in March 2005 with 394 rooms and suites, ninety-two of them suites, designed by Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, and it is owned by the Government of Abu Dhabi. It holds 1.3 kilometres of private beach on West Corniche Road at Ras Al Akhdar, and its ballroom runs to 2,183 square metres and seats up to two thousand four hundred.
A note on the name, since it causes confusion in booking engines: it is one hotel. It opened as Emirates Palace and now trades as Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental, Abu Dhabi. There is no separate Mandarin Oriental on the Corniche.
It is not a subtle building and it is not trying to be. It was built by the government, at a moment when the emirate wanted a statement rather than a hotel, and it reads exactly that way. What is unexpected is that under Mandarin Oriental’s operation it is also run rather well — a state monument that turns out to be good at breakfast.
Source: Davide Mauro, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Saadiyat, if you came for the museums
The case for Saadiyat is simple: you can walk to the Louvre, and the beach is a protected hawksbill turtle nesting ground rather than a dredged one.
Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi Hotel and Villas holds 306 rooms, suites and private villas on a nine-kilometre stretch of white sand, adjoining the Gary Player-designed Saadiyat Beach Golf Course. It is the quietest of the group and the one most often chosen by people who have been to Abu Dhabi before.
The St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort brings butler service, a spa with twelve treatment suites and the 3,000-square-metre Regal Ballroom, one of the largest in the emirate, with the same golf course on site. One practical warning: rooms and facilities are under renovation through October 2026, so check what is actually open before you book this winter.
Jumeirah Saadiyat Island opened in December 2018 as the group’s first eco-conscious resort, with four hundred metres of beach and the Saadiyat mangroves alongside — habitat for Indo-Pacific humpback and bottlenose dolphins, green and hawksbill turtles, and dugongs. Rixos Premium Saadiyat Island is the all-inclusive on the same sand, Accor-operated, across fourteen accommodation categories.
Nobu Hotel Abu Dhabi Saadiyat is announced rather than open — a hundred and sixty-five rooms and suites including a Nobu Villa, with residences and beach access. No opening date has been published, so do not plan a trip around it.
Source: Planet Labs, Inc., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Yas, if you came for the circuit
W Abu Dhabi — Yas Island has 499 rooms and suites and one genuinely unrepeatable feature: it is the only hotel in the world built on top of a Formula 1 circuit. The track runs beneath it. During Grand Prix weekend this is either the best room in motorsport or the worst night’s sleep of your life, depending on temperament.
Hilton Abu Dhabi Yas Island opened on 18 February 2021 with 545 rooms including fifty-nine suites, at Yas Bay on the southern end of the island, nine kilometres from the airport, with three restaurants and a beach club. It is the sane choice for a family doing the theme parks, and the shortest airport transfer on this list.
Al Maryah, if you came for the city
Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island opened in May 2016 with 162 rooms and thirty-eight suites in a thirty-four-storey glass tower by PLP Architecture, with interiors by Richmond International, HBA, Tihany Design and AvroKO, connected directly to The Galleria. There are more than two thousand artworks in the building, which sounds like a press release until you walk the corridors.
Rosewood Abu Dhabi was completed in 2013 on the same island — 189 hotel rooms plus 131 serviced apartments by Handel Architects, whose massing was drawn from falconry, the overlapping volumes of the facade taken from the way a falcon’s wings fold over its body. It is the most quietly intelligent piece of hotel architecture in the city.
Al Bateen, if you want the design one
The Abu Dhabi EDITION opened on 21 November 2018 at Al Bateen Marina — the brand’s first Middle Eastern property, 198 rooms plus fifty-seven serviced residences, from the hotel format Ian Schrager created. The exterior is a lattice shell referencing the lateen sails of dhows, and the interior is the low-lit, low-ego EDITION language applied to a marina.
It is the least Abu Dhabi hotel in Abu Dhabi, which is precisely why some people book it.
What is coming
Three properties are announced for the near term and none has a confirmed public opening date, so treat all of them as intentions rather than plans. Mondrian Abu Dhabi is to hold 221 rooms and suites plus eighty serviced apartments on the waterfront, built around a Crystal Lagoon with six dining venues. The Mangroves Abu Dhabi, under Hilton’s LXR label, takes over the former Anantara property beside the Mangrove National Park. Olympia Resort Abu Dhabi on Hudayriyat Island is the sport and recovery-led one, with hypoxic rooms and recovery lounges.
Read also: Abu Dhabi: the guide
The short answer
If it is a first visit and the museums are the reason, stay on Saadiyat and accept that you are twenty-five minutes from everything else. If you are here for the Grand Prix in December, stay on Yas and book it now. If you are working, Al Maryah puts you in the middle of the business district with the best restaurant density in the city.
And if you want to understand what Abu Dhabi thought it was doing in 2005, spend one night at Emirates Palace. It will not be the best room you stay in this year. It will be the most instructive.
Featured Image Source: Chris Down, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
