One & Only Royal Mirage - Residence & Spa

One & Only is widely seen as a luxury brand for elegant holidays. The Royal Mirage is certainly well-appointed and the public spaces beautifully designed and decorated. Standard rooms are not, however, especially luxurious and ours ( in the Palace) was outdated (will someone please get a spirit level out and re-hang the pictures?!). This was not the nicest hotel room we have stayed in Dubai, even at lower price points. Food is not consistent across the site. The breakfasts in Olives are dull. The Beach Bar and Grill, by contrast, was great. Tresind, whose 2-star flagship is just around the corner, was fantastic. Staff were on the whole very courteous and keen to help. We couldn’t fault them. If I was planning to return to a hotel at this price, I would go elsewhere. There are great options on the Palm or the Creek. Read less

This is a beautiful hotel, set in large grounds (think it’s 60 acres) and I can see its appeal but the experience just didn’t live up to the cost (£950 per night half board) What we liked - One of our motivators to book was having had an utterly flawless experience at the One and Only in Mauritius the prior year. The overall service and property is comparable. The site is large and beautifully maintained. The food at the included half board restaurants is of a very high quality. It’s effectively 3 hotels on one site and so on alternate nights the buffet restaurant at the Palace or the Arabian court (2 of the hotels) have a theme, for example an Italian A La Carte one night at Palace and seafood at Arabian Court another. This stops you feeling like you’re always eating a buffet at the same site. The half board credit is enough for c 70% of your meal at the other restaurants and so the incremental cost to eat at e.g. Beach Bar and Grill or Eauzone (both not inc in half board plan) for supper is modest. What we didn’t like - The wine list is extortionately expensive. Possibly this is an import duty / wine tax problem but a mediocre bottle of supermarket wine for £10 in the uk was their cheapest bottle at $80 equivalent. We’re happy to pay more for wine but paying >$150 for a £25 Uk bottle seemed like madness. Service - we travelled with our 4 month old and were specific and detailed about his need for a car seat safe for a child that age. What we got at the airport was a £100k car and a battered old car seat worth about a pound, suitable for a 2 year old, facing the wrong way (forwards) and thus ultimately dangerous - we had landed and so there wasn’t much we could do at the time. Whilst the concierge was keen to help (they outsource to a separate driving company) I had to chase this for five days in a row and resulted in much unnecessary stress. I also checked local rules / laws and they are the same as the Uk and so hard to grasp how our request was such a challenge to solve. Albeit it was in the end, the night before our departure. Check in was a total farce, first we were taken to the wrong hotel (Arabian court), all bags unbacked, welcome drinks, lots of “we will take you to your room shortly” - an enormous relief as all very tired and 2.5 hours before check in. Then “sorry this isn’t your hotel”, put everything back in the car (site is large) then whole process again, plus room not ready, went to the gym to shower and change, it then took 25 mins for them to find / bring us our bags (brought us the wrong ones 3 times) so we were able to change. All added stress when doing so with a 4 month old. Noise - a number of reviews mention this - there is a a day party most days at the Five Palm (see my diagram) and if the wind travels in the right direction you can hear the constant thump of bass until the evening. I measured 65 decibels on my balcony at 9:30pm. We didn’t complain a s what could we expect them to do! Constriction - whilst this isn’t exceptionally loud (or wasn’t whilst we were there) this background noise is also constant. There are multiple towers being built adjacent to the One and Only. See pics We can easily solve the car seat problem by bringing one, the other service stuff I could prob ignore but paying nearly £1k per day to listen to a party at another hotel or construction noise is not on. Read less