Atlantis The Royal

The opening weekend of Atlantis The Royal, on 21 January 2023, was a private concert by Beyoncé for invited guests, her first full performance in more than four years. Paying guests arrived from 10 February. The hotel stands on the outer crescent of Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, a short distance along the shore from the original Atlantis, and was built as the deliberate opposite of it.

History

Atlantis, The Palm opened in 2008 as a pink pastiche of the Bahamas resort of the same name, developed by Sol Kerzner's Kerzner International with Dubai's Nakheel. Kerzner, who died in 2020, had opened the first Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas in 1998 before bringing the name to the Gulf. When Kerzner and the Investment Corporation of Dubai set out to add a second hotel beside it, the brief was a contemporary tower rather than a themed palace. Construction took the better part of a decade, with a pause and redesign along the way, before the hotel opened in early 2023 under Kerzner International management.

Architecture and design

Kohn Pedersen Fox designed the building as a stack of rectangular blocks set at angles and apparently balanced on one another, with voids between them that frame the Gulf and the Dubai skyline. Sky bridges link the blocks, and some of the upper voids hold private infinity pools attached to suites. The composition reads as a single sculptural slab from the beach and as a cluster of separate towers from the air. Lighting and water features run through the ground levels, and the arrival drive passes a sequence of fountains and fire installations by the resort's entrance.

Rooms and suites

There are 795 keys in all: rooms, suites and a top tier of penthouses, some of which have their own terrace pools in the voids of the structure. The Royal Mansion, the largest accommodation, occupies an entire bridge section of the building.

Dining

The restaurant line-up was assembled from chefs with existing international names. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal is the Dubai outpost of the London restaurant. Nobu by the Beach is Nobu Matsuhisa's beach club version of his cuisine. José Andrés opened Jaleo, his Spanish restaurant, here. Ariana's Persian Kitchen is the Persian restaurant of Ariana Bundy, Estiatorio Milos is Costas Spiliadis's Greek seafood house, and Ling Ling comes from the Hakkasan group. Cloud 22, the rooftop pool bar on the 22nd floor, is the hotel's most photographed space.

Wellness

Awaken, the spa, has a hammam, treatment rooms and a wellness programme, and the resort claims more than 90 swimming pools in total, counting the private suite pools and the sky pool at Cloud 22.

Weddings and events

The hotel has a ballroom and a range of meeting rooms, plus outdoor terraces and the beach for receptions, and it hosts corporate conferences and weddings on a large scale. Guests at the Royal can also use the convention facilities and Aquaventure waterpark of Atlantis, The Palm along the crescent.

Location

The crescent of Palm Jumeirah is the breakwater that encloses the artificial island, reached by a road tunnel from the trunk or by the Palm Monorail. Dubai International Airport is about 35 minutes by car, Al Maktoum International about the same in the opposite direction. The Dubai Marina skyline sits across the water to the south. For a luxury hotel in Dubai, the Royal's distinction is architectural: it is the one new tower in the city that most visitors can identify by shape alone.