Al Maha, a Luxury Collection Desert Resort & Spa

An hour's drive south-east of Dubai, where the Al Ain road runs between red dunes, a gate opens onto a fenced reserve and a track leads to a cluster of low ochre buildings under canvas roofs. This is Al Maha, a Luxury Collection Desert Resort & Spa, and the first thing many guests see from their terrace is an Arabian oryx, the white antelope with long straight horns that gives the resort its name.

History

Emirates, the Dubai airline, built Al Maha and opened it in 1999 as the emirate's first desert resort. The project came with a conservation purpose. The land around the resort was fenced, camel grazing was stopped, and oryx and gazelle bred in captivity were released into it. In 2003 the government of Dubai extended that protection to 225 square kilometres, about five per cent of the emirate's land, and declared the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, the first protected area of its kind in the United Arab Emirates. The resort sits inside it and funds part of its work.

Emirates still owns the hotel. In 2014 it handed the management to Starwood's Luxury Collection, which became part of Marriott two years later, and the resort took its present name.

Architecture and design

The resort was laid out as a Bedouin encampment rather than a hotel block. Each suite is a separate low building of rendered masonry, its terrace shaded by a stretched canvas roof, and the suites are spaced far enough apart that none overlooks another. The main building holds the reception, the library, the restaurant and a long terrace facing the dunes. Inside, the owners filled the rooms with carpets, carved doors, antique weapons and other objects collected across Arabia and the wider region. Timber ceilings and heavy furniture give the public rooms the feel of a majlis rather than a lobby.

Rooms and suites

There are 42 suites. Every one has a private pool on its terrace, heated in winter and chilled in summer, and a deck that looks across the sand to the Hajar Mountains on the horizon. The Bedouin Suites are the standard category; the larger Royal and Emirates Suites add separate living rooms, and the Presidential Suite stands apart at the end of the site. The resort does not take young children, and there is no traffic to hear.

Dining

Al Diwaan is the resort's restaurant, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner on a terrace above a water hole where the animals come to drink at dusk. The kitchen mixes Arabic dishes with European ones. Dinner can also be set on the dunes under lantern light, a private table away from the buildings. The Hajar Terrace Bar faces the sunset.

Wellness

The spa, run under Emirates' own spa brand, occupies a building of its own with treatment rooms. The resort's programme of desert activities is as much part of its wellness offer as the spa: falconry at dawn, camel rides into the dunes at sunset, archery, horse riding, guided nature walks and wildlife drives with the field guides, two of which are included in each night's stay.

Weddings and events

Al Maha is built for couples and small groups, and its event business is of that scale. Weddings take place on the dunes or on the main terrace, with the reserve as the backdrop, for parties small enough to be housed in the suites. There is no ballroom, and meetings are limited to private gatherings of a size the main building can hold.

Location

The resort lies off the Dubai to Al Ain road, the E66, roughly 65 kilometres from the centre of Dubai and under an hour's drive from Dubai International Airport. Guests leave their cars at the reserve gate and are driven in by the resort's vehicles. It counts as a luxury hotel in Dubai because it stands within the emirate, but the city is out of sight and out of earshot, and most guests do not leave until they check out.