Twelve Kitchens and a Private Beach: Beach Rotana Abu Dhabi
A sea view room at Beach Rotana opens onto a private balcony, and the balcony is the detail worth booking for. Every room in the hotel has one, facing either the Gulf or the city. From the sea facing side the view runs over the water towards Al Maryah Island and the towers of the financial district. From the city side it takes in Al Zahiyah and, directly below, the hotel’s own stretch of sand.
Around that one room sits a property of 413 rooms and suites, twelve restaurants and bars, a private beach and a covered walk into one of the busiest shopping centres on the main island. Very few addresses in the capital combine those four things, and the combination is the whole argument for staying here.
An address in Al Zahiyah
Beach Rotana stands on 10th Street in Al Zahiyah, the district still widely known by its older name of the Tourist Club area, on the eastern side of the main island. Rotana places Zayed International Airport at 27 kilometres.
The hotel adjoins Abu Dhabi Mall and the connection is direct, giving guests more than two hundred shops, restaurants and cinemas without a step outdoors. Between May and September that covered link is worth a great deal more than a view. The Corniche is a short drive away and Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque around twenty minutes, while Al Maryah Island and its financial district sit across the water within sight of the upper floors.
Rooms, suites and residences
Accommodation divides into rooms, suites and the Club Rotana floors, with premium family rooms and beach suites among the categories. Serviced residences operate alongside the hotel for guests staying by the month rather than by the night, which is a large part of why the property runs so consistently full through the working year.
The rooms read as comfortable and well kept rather than fashionable, and the premium family category is sized for a family rather than merely named for one. What holds the whole inventory together is that balcony, which is rarer in Abu Dhabi than a visitor might assume. A good number of the capital’s newer towers are sealed from ground floor to roof, and a room you can open is a different proposition in January.
Twelve kitchens
Twelve restaurants and bars operate across the property, and the list reads as a survey of how Abu Dhabi has eaten for three decades.
Finz is the seafood restaurant, built out over the water on a timber deck and recognised in the MICHELIN Guide. Trader Vic’s is the Polynesian bar, and it has outlasted almost every fashionable room that opened after it. Rodeo Grill handles steak, Brauhaus is the German house and Benihana runs teppanyaki at the table. Indigo cooks Indian, Prego’s cooks Italian and Beach Garden takes a Mediterranean line at the water’s edge. Essence covers all day dining, Café Columbia is the coffee house, Bay View sits at the pool and Al Shorfa Lounge is the outdoor shisha terrace.
Most of those twelve could stand alone as a restaurant anywhere in the city, and several effectively do, since residents rather than guests fill a large share of the tables on any given evening. That is the substance of what this hotel offers. It is not chasing the newest concept in the capital; it is running a dozen kitchens that have been busy for years, which is the harder thing to sustain.
> Finz on a winter evening, doors open onto the water, has been a fixed pleasure of the capital for years. Very little in Abu Dhabi has been that reliable for that long.
Water, sand and courts
The private beach carries loungers, umbrellas, water sports rentals and full service, and it faces east, which puts the sun off the water by mid afternoon and makes the last hours of the day the pleasant ones.
An infinity pool sits above the sand, heated through the cooler months so that the swimming season runs at both ends of the year rather than only through the middle of it. The sports provision is unusually complete for a city hotel: tennis courts, squash courts and padel courts, the last of these now among the fastest growing club sports in the Emirates. Bodylines Fitness and Wellness Club runs the gymnasium and the class timetable alongside.
Zen the Spa Club
Zen the Spa Club provides private treatment rooms and a relaxation lounge alongside sauna, steam and a full treatment menu.
It is a working spa rather than a destination one, and that suits the rhythm of a hotel where most guests are here for three nights of business or a family week rather than a wellness retreat. A ninety minute gap between a meeting and a dinner is the unit of time it is built around, and it is arranged to fill that gap properly rather than to sell a full day programme.
Taken together with the courts, the pool and the gymnasium, it means a guest can spend an entire day inside the property without repeating themselves, which is a genuinely useful property in July.
Children, meetings and the mall
Bradee Kids Club serves families, with a children’s pool and an indoor game zone attached. Combined with the mall connection, it makes a very hot afternoon straightforward in a way the resorts on the outer islands cannot manage, because the alternative to the beach is fifty metres away and air conditioned.
On business, the ballroom and meeting rooms handle conferences and weddings at scale, and the position halfway along the eastern shore suits a working visit better than an address forty minutes out of town.
How to book it
Take a sea facing room for the balcony, reserve Finz for one evening and Trader Vic’s for one drink, and use the mall connection rather than the taxi rank. Set against Le Meridien, ten minutes further along the same shore, the choice resolves cleanly: Le Meridien has the mature gardens and the low buildings, Beach Rotana has the restaurant list, the courts and the shopping.
Contact
HOTEL: Beach Rotana Abu Dhabi
ADDRESS: 10th Street, Al Zahiyah E16 01, Abu Dhabi
TELEPHONE: +971 2 697 9000
EMAIL: res.beach@rotana.com
WEBSITE: https://www.rotana.com/rotanahotelandresorts/unitedarabemirates/abudhabi/beachrotana
AREA: Al Zahiyah