Eighteen Degrees: Andaz Capital Gate and the Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi

Fifteen minutes separate Zayed International Airport from the door, and for the last five of them the building is impossible to miss. Capital Gate leans, visibly and steeply, at eighteen degrees, which is roughly four times the incline of the tower at Pisa, and unlike Pisa it was engineered to do so from the drawing board rather than by accident of subsidence.

The approach runs off Al Khaleej Al Arabi Street into Al Multaqa Street, past the halls of the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, and the door sits at the base of the lean. Guests arriving for a conference walk to ADNEC in about ten minutes. Nobody else in Abu Dhabi is closer.

Fifteen minutes from the airport is a number worth dwelling on in a city where a beach resort on one of the outer islands can be forty. Combined with the ten minute walk to the exhibition halls, it means a delegate flying in for a two day trade fair spends almost none of it in a car, and the whole building is arranged around that guest.

Eighteen degrees, from the inside

The lean stops being an exterior fact the moment the lift doors open. Floor to ceiling windows on the leaning face produce a geometry no conventional tower can generate, and the effect from a window seat is genuinely disorienting in the most enjoyable way. The character of the view shifts as you move up the building rather than simply widening.

The rooftop terrace, nineteen floors above the city, carries the pool deck and The Lean, the bar attached to it. A pool at that height on a building at that angle is a piece of engineering as much as a leisure facility.

From the terrace the exhibition halls sit directly below and the city runs away towards the Corniche. Late afternoon is the hour to be up there, when the glass on the leaning face takes the last of the light. It is also the point at which the eighteen degrees stops reading as a statistic and starts reading as a place to stand.

What is inside the rooms

Hyatt lists 188 rooms and suites, of which 21 are suites, and 13 accessible rooms among them. Standard rooms run to 40 square metres, deluxe rooms to 45, and a panoramic view king to 48 with a complimentary non alcoholic minibar.

Above those, the Capital Suite runs to 70 square metres, the Executive Suite to 100, the Andaz Suite to 120 with a signature whirlpool tub and views over the Arabian Gulf, the Presidential Suite to 160 and the Diplomat Suite to 245 with two oversized king beds. A family room of 85 square metres interconnects and carries two bathrooms, a two bedroom executive suite runs to 140, and a four bedroom apartment suite of 220 square metres sleeps up to nine across four marble bathrooms.

Bathrooms throughout are finished in marble with walk in rain showers and deep soaking tubs. Rooms carry Hyatt Grand Beds, individual climate control, high speed wireless and fifty five inch OLED screens with Chromecast. Check in is from three in the afternoon and check out at midday, and private beach access ten minutes away is provided at no charge, which is how a hotel with no shoreline of its own answers the question.

Four symbols, and a gallery

The interiors are built on four elements of Emirati culture: mashrabiya, the carved wooden window screen; khatt, Islamic calligraphy; al sadu, the traditional woven textile; and the date palm.

Every room is furnished with pieces made by local artisans, and a permanent gallery of five thousand square feet exhibits work by Emirati artists. The loungewear in the wardrobes comes from a local designer. This is a real commitment rather than a decorative one. A great many hotels in the Gulf gesture at local culture through pattern and colour; this one commissioned the objects and then hung the art permanently.

> Give the gallery half an hour rather than walking through it on the way to the lift. Five thousand square feet of commissioned Emirati

Cyan Brasserie, The Lean and 18 Degree

The food and drink follows the Andaz template, informal and social rather than formal. Cyan Brasserie is the modern brasserie, French in root. Andaz Lounge runs specialty coffee, pastries and confections, and 165 Below Café is the second coffee room. 18 Degrees Bar and Terrace handles cocktails at ground level and The Lean does the same nineteen floors up on the pool deck. Room service operates alongside.

Rayana Spa and the working visit

Rayana Spa and the fitness centre complete the wellness offer, and guest reviews single out the staff repeatedly, which for a hotel led by its design is the harder half of the job to get right. Hyatt’s own guest rating for the property stands at 4.5 out of 5 across more than eight hundred reviews.

Andaz Salon provides the meeting and event space, which matters less here than it might elsewhere, since the exhibition halls next door will take anything larger than a board meeting. What the hotel supplies instead is the twenty rooms a delegation needs, the breakfast that gets them out of the door on time and a bar to come back to.

Connecting rooms, cots and rollaway beds come at no charge, so families work here, though the register is design conscious and adult and the property is at its best with grown ups in it.

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The ADNEC calculation

For anyone exhibiting, speaking or attending at the exhibition centre, the ten minute walk decides the matter before any other consideration arrives. Set against Dusit Thani, twelve minutes north on Al Muroor Road, the two inland towers answer different briefs: Dusit has 402 rooms, an eight room spa open until midnight and apartments for the long stay, while Andaz has 188 rooms, a rooftop pool nineteen floors up, a gallery of commissioned Emirati art and a building that exists nowhere else.

Ask for a room on the leaning face, and take the last hour of the afternoon on the roof.

Contact

HOTEL: Andaz Capital Gate, Abu Dhabi, by Hyatt
ADDRESS: 6 Al Multaqa Street, Al Rawdah, Al Ma’arid, Abu Dhabi
TELEPHONE: +971 2 596 1234
EMAIL: abdcc.reservations@hyatt.com
WEBSITE: https://www.hyatt.com/andaz/en-US/auhaz-andaz-capital-gate-abu-dhabi
AREA: ADNEC / Capital Gate