Hotel of the Week: Dubai Newcomer Nods to Miami Roots with Stylish Splendor

Located on shores of Bluewaters, The Delano elegantly retells the hotel's origin story without following a copy-and-paste model

January 31, 2025

Penthouse view. Photo: Natelee Cocks

Dubai is a city of superlatives. It holds hundreds of Guinness Book of World Records for things ranging from the world’s largest mall (12.1 million square feet) to the tallest fountain (with sprays over 344 feet), tallest building (2,716 feet), and tallest hotel (75 floors, 1,168 feet). The Delano Dubai, in comparison, boasts a relatively diminutive 251 guest rooms, including 84 suites. Its penthouse is on the seventh floor, with all-encompassing water and city views that include the aforementioned buildings. In a very over-the-top, more-is-more locale, it is a purposeful and incredibly stylish outlier.

The luxurious urban resort, which is part of the Ennismore portfolio, opened three months ago on Bluewaters, one of Dubai’s five man-made islands, poised on an enviable spot in the Arabian Gulf with what many consider to be the best stretch of beach in the area.

Guest accommodations. Photo: Natelee Cocks

Comparisons to the first and legitimately legendary Delano are inevitable. A brief primer: the modern-day Delano hotel debuted in Miami in 1995 on a then-seedy stretch of Collins Avenue. It was brainchild of Studio 54 founders Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, who tapped Philippe Starck for the interiors, and almost immediately became the place to see and be seen drawing celebrities, models, and other notables.

Outdoor space. Photo: Natelee Cocks

“Schrager’s move was to make the rooms smaller and the public areas more interesting to get people to socialize and interact,” observed Mark Eacott, Global Vice President of Design for Ennismore. Most notably, the lobby. The Miami version of yore boasted billowing white swathes of fabric suspended from the double-height ceiling, creating intimate spaces for a variety of activities. A version of those grace Delano Dubai’s generous, elegant-but-not-stuffy lobby. “They key thing for us is how to retell the Delano story, 30 years later. If we had done a copy-and paste of what Schrager and Starck did, I think it would have missed the ethos of what they were about. They were also breaking rules they didn’t know existed. So we went back into the archives and interviewed people in Miami about the things that made it so original.”

Guest accommodations. Photo: Natelee Cocks

Aside from said curtains, nods to the Delano’s former self include sunken furniture in the pool, a life-sized chess set outdoors, their take on the “apple-a-day” in the guest rooms (an apple-shaped vessel with “treats”), and a reimagination of the legendary Rose Bar and Blue Door Restaurant. While Starck’s bright-white rooms were considered avant-garde at the time, that color scheme has been retired in lieu of sublime “soft minimalism”—warm and textured neutrals, curvaceous furnishings, and natural materials. Each room has outdoor space, Byredo bath products and the now-requisite Dyson hair dryers. Some suites have private pools; the sprawling, five-bedroom penthouse boasts a Bulthaup professional kitchen, indoor and outdoor dining areas, a firepit and, of course, a private infinity pool. “This is a breath of fresh air, an antidote to Dubai’s hospitality market. So many people have said to us ‘I didn’t feel like I was in Dubai,’” mused Eacott. “In a way, it’s doing something a little more disruptive, like Schrager did in South Beach back in 1995.”

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