Review: Conrad Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers, when branded as Jumeirah At Etihad Towers
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This is my review of my stay at the Jumeirah At Etihad Towers hotel in Abu Dhabi. This hotel is, since late 2020, trading as the Conrad Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers hotel – the new website is here.
This is a continuation of my Abu Dhabi trip report. Other articles in this series cover the Hilton London Heathrow Terminal 4 hotel, the Etihad lounge in Heathrow Terminal 4, the Business Class Studio on the new Etihad A380, the Etihad Premium Lounge in Abu Dhabi and the First Class Suite on the Boeing 777.
There are plenty of accommodation options in Abu Dhabi. For a family holiday, the obvious choice is Emirates Palace. It is a huge green place which I saw every day from my 44th floor room in Etihad Towers! Yas Island and Sa’adiyat Island, nearer the airport, are being developed as holiday resorts – there you will find the St Regis and Park Hyatt amongst other options.
I decided to go with Jumeirah in the city centre instead. Jumeirah do a good job at running luxury hotels and they have the financial backing from ‘Dubai Inc’ to make sure things work. I have stayed at the Carlton Tower in London, Emirates Towers in Dubai and Al Qasr in Dubai. We spend 20 nights a year at Dar Al Masyaf at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai, which is a truly astonishing place kept in tip-top condition. (We have family in Dubai which is why we are down there a lot – it is not a lack of imagination.)
Etihad Towers is also the top-rated Abu Dhabi property on TripAdvisor. With only 36 hours in the city – and with some work to do as well – I simply didn’t need the facilities of a huge resort.
I paid for my room using Sirius points from the Jumeirah loyalty scheme. This article explains how I paid for the entire trip on miles and points.
As you can see from the photo above, Emirates Towers is a mixed use office, condominium and hotel scheme. It includes a luxury shopping mall, should you feel the need to visit Hermes, Tom Ford or even Waitrose during your stay. It looks a lot more ‘human’ at beach level (yes, it has a modest beach) as you can see below:
My Etihad redemption included free chauffeur transfers so they dropped me at the hotel. The lobby is h-u-g-e, quadruple height and glass walled as you can see above.
The hotel is mouth shaped which means that the rooms are of varying sizes. The nearer you are to the middle, the bigger your space. Possible because I was a Sirius Silver card holder, I was given a room right in the middle which meant lots of space:
The room was well appointed, including a free coffee machine. Wi-Fi is free for all guests. There was a ludicrous amount of wardrobe space and a full set of bathroom freebies including toothbrush, razor etc.
The shower gel, shampoo etc come in a specially designed holder – each bottle is the shape of one of the towers in the complex. You effectively get a model of the top photograph made from plastic bottles!
There is no need to spend the night alone at Emirates Towers:
My 3-year old now has this in his bed. Jumeirah runs a sanctuary for injured turtles at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai.
Breakfast is a huge affair with more food than you even begin to contemplate eating. The downside is the price which is roughly £30 per person. My Jumeirah Silver card meant I didn’t have to pay, but if you are booking here for cash I suggest taking a B&B rate. Alternatively, there is a café in the shopping centre in the basement which is far cheaper and good quality.
I spent the one day I was in the hotel down by the beach and pool. You wouldn’t want to spend a week there on holiday, especially with kids, but for a stopover it did the job.
Again, the staff were excellent. Whether it was setting up your chair, bringing you drinks, bringing lunch or even offering free lollypops, they were on hand. This is one of the three pools, with a swim-up bar at the back.
You can just see, behind the bar, part of a construction site next to the hotel. This did not cause much noise but it isn’t incredibly attractive either.
I didn’t eat a ‘proper’ evening meal, having a snack in the lobby instead. The hotel is not short of options, including a branch of Mayfair fish restaurant Scott’s which is built out into the water:
After the nightmare I had at the St Regis in Doha, it was a joy to spend 36 hours in a hotel which ‘worked’. It was only one day, however. At 10.30am the next morning, my 3rd Etihad chauffeur of the trip appeared to whisk me off to the airport.
The hotel’s new website, as a Conrad (from late 2020), can be found here.
Click here for the next review in this series – the Etihad Premium Lounge in Abu Dhabi.
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