Six Categories and Four Pools: Millennium Al Rawdah Hotel

The tower stands at 1778 Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Street, set back from one of the widest carriageways in Abu Dhabi with its own parking on the plot. It is an upright, plainly detailed building of the kind the capital put up in numbers as its exhibition trade grew, and the interest lies in what the floor plan allows rather than in the facade.

What it allows is range. Six categories of room, running from thirty five square metres to a hundred and eighty. Four swimming pools, two of them under cover. Eight meeting rooms and a ballroom that subdivides. A fitness centre that never closes, and a hair and beauty salon on the premises.

The Al Rawdah address

Al Rawdah is the exhibition and government quarter of the capital, laid out inland around wide roads rather than along a shoreline.

The Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre and Capital Gate are close enough to make this a working base for anyone with a stand to man or a session to chair. The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is a short drive, as is the Khor Al Maqta creek with its row of resorts, and Al Forsan International Sports Resort sits out towards Khalifa City. Abu Dhabi International Airport is around twenty minutes by road.

For a guest whose week runs between a hall, a boardroom and a terminal, that geometry is the whole argument for the address.

Six categories, thirty five square metres to a hundred and eighty

The room list is deeper than the building’s exterior suggests, and the sizes are published rather than left to the imagination.

Deluxe rooms run to thirty five square metres and premier rooms to forty two. Above them sit suites of seventy square metres, premier suites of ninety, and premier suites with a balcony at a hundred and five. The Al Rawdah Suite, at the top of the list, runs to a hundred and eighty.

That spread matters more than it first appears. A hotel serving exhibitions has to house a junior on a stand and a chairman on the same night, and this one holds stock for both without either feeling misplaced. Proper desks and workspaces are standard throughout, and the executive categories add the Executive Lounge, which for a delegate returning late from a session is the difference between an evening and an ordeal.

Connecting rooms are available for families, although the guest base here leans firmly towards business.

Blue Bar, Baloo’s and Oceana Grill

The hotel counts six restaurants on site alongside a bar and a lounge, and the named venues cover more ground than the district would predict.

Oceana Grill handles international and Middle Eastern cooking. Blue Bar works across South American and modern Arabic dishes. Baloo’s serves South African food, which is a rare thing to find anywhere in the Emirates and reason enough for residents to make the drive out. The Link Cafe covers coffee and light plates through the day, and room service runs around the clock.

The operation that decides a hotel of this type, though, is breakfast. Three hundred delegates leaving for the same hall at the same hour will break a kitchen that has not been built for it, and this kitchen has been.

> Judge an exhibition hotel on the half hour after seven in the morning, when everybody in the building wants coffee at the same time. That is the test this one is designed around.

Four pools, two of them indoors

The outdoor pool measures twenty five metres, which is long enough for a proper swim rather than a token length, and a children’s pool sits beside it.

Two further pools are indoors. In a city where the outdoor water is unusable through parts of a summer afternoon, that is a genuine provision rather than a line on a list, and very few hotels in the capital carry indoor water at all.

The spa adds a sauna and a whirlpool alongside its treatment menu, the fitness centre runs around the clock and the salon operates on site. There is no beach, which the inland position makes obvious, and guests wanting sand drive to the Corniche or to the creek.

Eight meeting rooms and a ballroom that subdivides

Eight meeting rooms and a grand ballroom that divides give the hotel conference capacity of its own, which is the point of a property standing this close to the exhibition centre.

A visiting delegation can take rooms here, hold its own sessions in the building, feed itself across the on site kitchens and still be at the hall within minutes. The Executive Lounge absorbs the small meetings that fill the gaps between sessions, and the business floor is sized for groups rather than for individuals.

Reading it against Capital Gate

The obvious alternative for an exhibition visit is Andaz Capital Gate, which holds 189 rooms inside the leaning tower beside the centre, furnishes them with pieces made by local artisans and shows Emirati work across five thousand square feet of gallery.

The two answer different questions. Andaz sells the building itself and prices on that basis. Millennium Al Rawdah sells floor area, water and meeting capacity a few minutes down the road, with a hundred and eighty square metre suite at the top of its list and four pools underneath it. For a keynote speaker, one. For a delegation of twenty on a four day stand, the other.

Booking it

Take a premier room at forty two square metres for a short stay, or an executive category when the lounge will earn its keep. Swim the twenty five metre pool before breakfast, give one evening to Baloo’s, and keep the creek in mind for a dinner worth leaving the building for.

Contact

HOTEL: Millennium Al Rawdah Hotel
ADDRESS: 1778 Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Street, Al Rawdah W68, Abu Dhabi
TELEPHONE: +971 2 617 0000
EMAIL: info.mcga@millenniumhotels.com
WEBSITE: https://www.millenniumhotels.com/en/abu-dhabi/millennium-al-rawdah-hotel/
AREA: Al Rawdah