The Officers Club, Rebuilt: ERTH Abu Dhabi Hotel

Four five star hotels stand along the Khor Al Maqta within sight of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, and ERTH is the one that arrived by conversion rather than construction. The building was the Armed Forces Officers Club Hotel, a landmark of a particular era in Abu Dhabi, and when the time came its owners chose to rebuild it around a coherent idea rather than clear the site and start again.

Erth means earth in Arabic, and the name is doing real work. The materials, the pattern and the way the public rooms are dressed all proceed from it, and the result is the rarest thing in a city of new construction, which is a hotel with a previous life that it openly acknowledges.

Khor Al Maqta, and the grounds it inherited

The hotel stands on Al Khaleej Al Arabi Road at Khor Al Maqta, close to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and within easy reach of the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre and the airport.

That places it in the same neighbourhood as the Ritz-Carlton, the Shangri-La and the Fairmont, though ERTH sits slightly back from the creek side row and reads quite differently from all three.

The grounds are the inheritance that matters. They are extensive, they came with the original club, and they are mature in a way no new build can arrange. Trees of that size cannot be bought and installed, and a hotel that has them has something its neighbours will need another thirty years to grow.

Weaving, palm frond and calligraphy

The interiors draw on Emirati craft traditions, weaving, palm frond work, geometric pattern and calligraphy, handled in a contemporary register rather than reproduced as decoration.

The discipline is in the consistency. The same vocabulary runs through the public rooms and up onto the guest floors, so the building reads as one argument rather than as a lobby with a theme and bedrooms that forgot it.

It is instructive to set this beside Andaz Capital Gate, which commissioned local artisans to furnish 189 rooms in a new tower. Applying the same instinct to a building that already exists, with its structure, its proportions and its history fixed in advance, is the harder exercise, and ERTH carries it off across a far larger floor plate.

Rooms built to older floor plates

The accommodation runs across rooms and suites, generously proportioned in the manner of the original building, finished contemporarily with the same Emirati detailing.

Room sizes here are noticeably larger than in most modern Abu Dhabi hotels at comparable rates, and the reason is structural rather than generous. The bones of the property date from a period when floor plates were laid out without much concern for yield per square metre, and a conversion inherits those dimensions whether or not the arithmetic would justify them today.

For a guest, this is simply free space. Suites in particular carry the proportions of a building designed for receptions rather than for room nights.

The dining rooms and the banqueting business

The restaurant programme covers international and regional cooking with terrace and garden seating, and the venues have built a following among Abu Dhabi residents who come for events at the property.

The banqueting operation is substantial and, like the grounds, inherited. The original club was built to hold large formal occasions, and the hotel that replaced it remains one of the better known wedding venues in the capital, with meeting and banqueting capacity among the largest in Abu Dhabi. Its position between the mosque and the exhibition centre keeps both the conference and the wedding trade coming.

> ERTH has something almost no hotel in Abu Dhabi can claim, which is a constituency of local guests who knew the building in its previous life. That gives the place a texture no new opening can buy.

Pools, spa and the sports facilities

The pool and the grounds are the property’s clearest advantage over a tower, with mature landscaping and open space that a hotel stacked on a small plot simply cannot offer.

The spa and fitness offer covers the expected treatments and equipment, and the extensive sports facilities remain from the original club, which is an unusual inheritance for a hotel of any kind. Families are accommodated comfortably and the grounds give children room to move, which on this stretch of the creek is worth more than another restaurant.

Among the creek side neighbours

The Khor Al Maqta group divides on what each property is built around. The Ritz-Carlton runs 530 rooms across ten buildings arranged along a cut canal, with a private beach and a marina. Shangri-La Qaryat Al Beri has four pools, a private beach and an abra ride to a traditional souq. Fairmont Bab Al Bahr faces the mosque across its own sand and undercuts both on rate.

ERTH has no beach and does not pretend otherwise. What it has instead is grounds the others cannot match, room sizes drawn from an older idea of how much space a guest should get, and a design programme rooted in Emirati craft rather than imported wholesale. For a visitor who wants to understand where they are staying rather than simply where they are looking, it is the address on this creek that answers the question.

How to use it

Take a room facing the gardens, and give the public rooms proper time rather than walking through them on the way to the lift. Walk the grounds in the early evening, and time a visit to the Grand Mosque for the last hour of daylight, which is a short drive from the door.

Contact

HOTEL: ERTH Abu Dhabi Hotel
ADDRESS: Khor Al Maqta, Al Khaleej Al Arabi Road, Abu Dhabi
TELEPHONE: +971 2 441 5900
EMAIL: igrab@erth.ae
WEBSITE: https://www.erthabudhabi.com/
AREA: Khor Al Maqta