Sarah
“I am sorry mam, but the beach is closed.” – I think was this was the moment where I finally decided that Habtoor Grand Resort Dubai by Autograph Collection Hotels does not deserve its Category 6 from Mariott.
(For everyone who is not aware of Mariott’s system: Mariott categorized each of its hotels into a category ranging from Category 1 (the lowest) to Category 8 (the highest). It’s supposed to describe the standard and value of the property. There is only very few Category 8 hotels in the world (in fact, Marriott only has a category 8 since 2019) – so a Category 6 hotel is supposed to be one of their finest offerings.)
I am not saying that Habtoor Grand Resort is a bad hotel. I am saying, that it is not a category 6 by Marriott’s standards and that you will be vastly disappointed if you know Marriott and expect Category 6 standards. Also, there were some incidents that we also reported to Marriott because they were absolutely not acceptable.
I’ll show you all the good and bad aspects of this luxury hotel in Dubai Marina in this review. And I’ll give you a recommendation for some better choices – right next door to Habtoor Grand Resort.
Table of Contents
Pin this for later!
The location of Habtoor Grand Resort Dubai
Habtoor Grand Hotel is located directly at the beach of Dubai Marina. In fact, this was the reason that we chose this hotel for oir second weekend in Dubai (and the fact that Grosvenor House was fully booked and Le Royal Meridien and Ritz Carlton had sky high prices due to limited availability as well).
To it’s right side is the famous Zero Gravity Beach Club. It’s so close that you can in fact just walk in from your beach to theirs. (Although the security will probably stop you at one point)
To the left is Le Royal Meridien Dubai and left of that a building ground and Ritz Carlton Dubai.
It’s pretty easy to see that you can’t complain about the location of Habtoor Grand Hotel – this IS where you want to stay in Dubai (or the Palm Jumeirah).
The hotel grounds of Habtoor Grand Resort Dubai
Habtoor Grand Hotel consists of two towers and some lower garden buildings. There is a big central pool and a small infinity pool on the 3rd floor of the connecting building between the towers. A large garden leads to the beach area where you can find beach chairs and beds.
Directly at the beach is also the hotels own beach club Andreea’s with another pool. Weirdly, this pool and the club is not open to guests of the hotel and you would have to pay the same entrance fee than outside visitors. You’ll certainly hear their music playing by the beach though. I think it’s weird to not have a discount at least for hotel guests at their own property and I am giving minus points for that to Habtoor Grand Resort in this review.
The room of Habtoor Grand Resort Dubai
So let’s review the room of Habtoor Grand Resort Dubai: We were given a room on the 17th floor with “partial sea view”. I would probably describe it as “other tower view with a glimpse of the harbour” but okay, there was water visible.
As Markus is a Platinum Elite with Marriott (their highest loyalty standard) we should have been upgraded to the best available room including standard suites. We rarely “have to take just” the standard room. I can’t say whether they ignored the platinum rights or if really nothing was available so I won’t hold this against them.
The Standard rooms are nice though. I liked the Arabian design and the bathroom with blue mosaics. The size was fine as well and there was a sofa and a work desk
Explore Habtoor Grand Resort Room in 360°
Pictures don’t do hotel rooms justice all the time? Well, then I have something new for you!
I have partnered up with Wolowo – an online tour creator that makes it possible to create 3D Tour that you can navigate around. There is even additional pictures and info spots that you can click – If this doesn’t give you a feeling of the room, well, then you need to visit the place yourself I guess! 🙂
To move around simply drag the image – and click the white hotspot (the white dot with the black border) to move to another room / panorama!
If you are a blogger and are interested in taking 3D panoramas like this with your smartphone too – then contact me or Wolowo. They have a product called the Wolaptor to make this super easy.
And if you are a hotel that would like to have a similar tour for your hotel: Shoot me an email to [email protected] – I can do this for you too!
The food at Habtoor Grand Resort Dubai
We only ate breakfast at the hotel and some snacks from the executive lounge.
We opted not to eat at any hotel restaurants given the hefty price tag and the questionable quality of some dishes at breakfast.
Breakfast was okay generally, but not on the standard of a five star hotel – and certainly not a category 6 of Marriott. I would say it was fine for a four star hotel.
There was a number of international dishes and local dishes (some Indian curry, Shashouka, Falafel, Lanneh) as well as continental and English breakfast items. Also, on a positive side, they had an omelette station. Sadly, they only staffed one of the two station over our four days stay which resulted in long queues as well. The quality of the dishes varied – and some like the Falafel were barely edible. It surprised me to find the worst falafels in my life in an Arabian themed 5 star luxury resort in Dubai…
It was difficult to get staffs attention to get more tea and coffee. Also, for any coffee specialties, you had to line up on a coffee machine yourself and there was ALWAYS a long queue. I think, they simply did not have enough staff for the number of guests.
The pools (Main Pool and Horizon)
I definitely liked the small infinity pool on the third level. The bar is called Horizon and also hosts a great ladies night on Thursday evening with free drinks for ladies.
The pool has a beautiful view (you can even see Atlantis hotel on the Palm Jumeirah) and is cooled down in summer time.
I am not a big fan of the main pool though.
It was crowded and felt like a medium class holiday resort. There was an overpriced swimup bar (special offer: 5 small beer for 180AED – that’s 10$ each) and a tacky water slide for kids. The water temperature was already so high that it was difficult to cool off and the layer of sunscreen on it was pretty visible.
Also, the resort holds Scuba diving training in this pool (that is not lower than 1.5m anywhere) which further reduces and possible relaxation moment there.
Also, it is next to impossible to get a sun loungers and almost impossible to get pool towels. There is only one towel station and there were out of towels almost all of the time.
One pool visit we walked up there three times always to get the answer that there will be new towels in a few minutes and that they would bring us one to our sun chair (that, without a towel was too hot to sit on given the black color). They never did. We saw them hand out the few newly arrived towels and went there again. They said sorry, promised to bring them next time and we went back into the water. After that had happened three (!) times, I was so outraged that I stomped to the hotel lobby drippingly wet and claimed a towel from there…
The beach (and the issue with it)
Now we are getting to the frizzy part I mentioned in the beginning.
The beach itself is gorgeous and the water was warm and calm. You have to walk quite a few meters from reception here but that was worth it. There is just one problem with this beach: they “close” it after dark. That means, even though you are at JBR, you can’t walk along the beach after dark because security will stop you from LEAVING the hotel grounds. There is no reason given for that and it’s certainly not necessary for ANY reason (like security).
We accepted that the first time and looked toward the inviting white sand from the chair on the grass we were not allowed to leave. The second night, Markus and I tried to sneak past the security guide, feeling like on an Assassin’s Creed mission. He noticed us anyway and tried to stop us. While Markus was arguing with the guy I simply walked on and thus we managed to have a stroll along the beach…
Ironically, we could enter later without being seen or stopped. Seems like security is only there to stop people from LEAVING the premises of the hotel…
The Executive Lounge at Habtoor Grand Resort Dubai
One of the things we liked was that Habtoor Grand Hotel has an executive lounge on the 25th floor with great views over the bay. They offer continental breakfast, high tea (3-5pm) as well as pre-dinner drinks (6pm-8pm). Pre-dinner drinks included some food and snacks as well.
However in direct comparison with the lounge at the nearby Grosvenor House, Habtoor Grand Hotel looses the battle. While the food selection of Habtoor Grand Hotel was normal for a lounge, Grosvenor House offered lunch and a full dinner (although they also call it pre-dinner drinks). Drinks selection and quality was fine at the executive lounge in Habtoor Grand Resort – but again not on par with the quality of Grosvenor House Dubai.
Biggest problem: The staff and the service level
I’ll subsum the following issues I encountered during our stay here.
Generally speaking, staff was friendly (especially at the infinity pool/Horizon Bar as well as the executive lounge – no complaints here!).
However, there were a number of issues during our stay that I can’t ignore in this review:
Check-in
Let’s start with check-in: when I arrived at 12:30pm my room was not yet ready. Given that check-in was at 3pm, this is perfectly fine. It took them over 20min to get the details of my check-in right and to find my husband’s booking and Marriott number. However the guy handling my check-in was a trainee so I think this is not respresentative and not a general issue. They asked for my phone number to calls me if the room is ready earlier than 3pm and showed me to a waiting area.
The waiting area did not even have water so I was not really overwhelmed. At 3:20pm I still hadn’t gotten a call and went back to reception. Asking about my room they noticed that it was already ready…unfortunately they had to verify all the details again. It took another 10minutes until I got my room card.
The pool towel station
Then there was the incident with the pool towels described above. You simply can’t promise to your customers to bring them towels and then ignore that promise THREE times.
The closed beach and the security guard
Next, was the security that was reluctant to let us sit at the beach at night without giving an explanation.
I am sure he was just following orders – but you better have an explanation for guests why they can’t access the beach. “It’s private property of the hotel and they close it at night” was not enough for us.
Check-out
However, the worst incident happened immediately before checkout:
The evening before we ensured again with reception that we can check out by 2pm (technically we are entitled to a 4pm checkout because of the Platinum Elite status but accepted 2pm because the hotel was busy).
At 13:20 I took a last shower after a pool visit. I had activated in “do not disturb”. Still, at 13:30 someone knocked my door. I called “not now, please come back later”. They kept knocking. I opened the door and in front of me was someone from reception with a security (!) guard. I asked them what’s wrong and he told me to leave the room and checkout. Imagine me, just coming out of the shower alone (Markus had already left early in the morning) having to face someone insisting I open my door and standing there with a security guard.
Clearly, they were trying to threaten me to leave the room immediately.
However, they made their calculations with the wrong person – it’s not that easy to scare me. I told them that I still have 30 minutes until my late check-out and that they can have the keys later. I then closed and locked the door.
When I reported the incident 20 minutes later at reception, they didn’t have any idea why had given that order (or who was the guy at my room door) and again reconfirmed that I had late check-out until 2pm.
They said they will look into the issue – but I hardly doubt they will. And it is simply something that should NEVER happen.
Fun fact, the next week, we were chatting with an employee of St. Regis Saadiyat Island – and the EXACT same thing happened to her during check-out. So I guess, they have a pattern here…!
Wrap up – My personal verdict on Habtoor Grand Resort Dubai
Not everything was bad at Habtoor Grand Resort. The property certainly is in a great location and has beautiful rooms as well as a gorgeous beach. Also, I loved the infinity pool at Horizon.
However I think this property does not deserve to be a Category 6 by Marriott’s standards. Instead, I think it should be downgraded to a Category 4. Also, they should address the staff issues (they simply need more staff and train them better). It would be easy for Habtoor Grand Resort to improve the experience.
Currently, this place does not feel like a luxury hotel owned by an international group like Marriott. It is more that feeling of a mid-range standard holiday resort.
We stayed at a very similar property some years ago in Egypt because we found a last minute offer. We payed 450€ each for a week of all-inclusive, including flights from Berlin for that one. At Habtoor Grand Resort, our room rate was roughly 250€ a night with breakfast only making that a very questionable 1000€ stay for four nights.
This article contains affiliate links. That means, if you choose to purchase a product or stay at a hotel I recommended, I get a small commission for that at no extra cost for you. I always only recommend products or places that I am personally convinced about – rest assured about that!
Where to stay instead in Dubai Marina
There is an abundance of other great hotels around with a much better price/value offering and I thus I recommend you to stay at one of these (unless you get a really good rate for Habtoor Grand Hotel).
My first recommendation is Grosvenor House Dubai. It is literally just across the street and even though it is “only” a category 5 by Marriott, it offers a much better service and experience.
Grosvenor House Dubai partners with Le Royal Meridien (Habtoor Grand Resorts direct neighbor hotel) so you can use their beach and facilities as well. There is even a shuttle bus between the two hotels even though they are so close to each other!
If you absolutely want to be at the beach then go for Le Royal Meridien directly. We had visited the property during our stay at Grosvenor House and even asked them to see some rooms (which they happily did). They looked really pretty (especially their circular suites) and their executive lounge has the same concept as Grosvenor House. It is under the same management so I have no doubt that their service will be superior as well. We wanted to actually book it for the weekend we stayed at Habtoor Grand Resort but Le Royal Meridien had outrageous rates these days due to their high occupancy (over 700€/night). It’s a category 6 as well and a far better option should you pay with points!
And that’s not all Marriott properties here – next to Le Royal Meridien is Ritz Carlton (Category 8) and just 5-10 minutes north of Habtoor is another Le Meridien (Category 6) and a Westin (Category 7) – it’s easy to see you have lots of other luxury options around. I have not stayed at any of these properties – but I saw the grounds of the other Le Meridien as well when I visited to famous Barasti Beach club (with its amazing ladies days offer). In fact, Barasti is part of Le Meridien – making this an especially interesting option if you are staying from over Sunday to Tuesday and are female!
Hi Sarah! I am sorry to correct you, but Platinum is not the highest status you can reach with Marriott, it is Titanium. So maybe a Titanium member got the room upgrade you so desperately desired. 🙂
Hi – you are right that Titanium is even higher. But I am pretty sure that there were not so many Titanium members that they couldn’t upgrade us. Especially since suites were still available on their website when we checked in. 🙂 Anyway, this was only one very small issue – the other problems were much more serious.