A city raised from sand, and the desert never far.
Seven hours from London and four ahead of it, Dubai sits where the maps fold — a night's flight from Europe, a morning's from most of Asia, and built, more than almost any city, to be arrived at well. Everything here is recent. The scale is deliberate.
Our clients come for the winter light, for hotels that treat a suite as a private residence, and for a coastline of glass towers with the empty desert kept an hour behind them. It rewards those who know which door to use.
Why Our Clients Go
Dubai runs in two registers. There is the one on the postcards — the tallest tower, the palm-shaped island, the gold — and there is the quieter one held behind it: the corner table at the restaurant that stopped taking new names, the suite that faces the fountains rather than the car park, the driver who knows the service entrance. We work in the second register.
We know which floors of the Burj Al Arab have been redone and which have not, which of the Bulgari villas catch the marina, and the difference between a room at the Four Seasons and the one two doors along. We know the general managers by name, and they know ours. That is the whole of what we sell.
The city moves on relationships and on speed, and both suit us. A request made in the morning is usually settled by the afternoon, and the answer is more often yes than no.
How We Arrange It
- 01Emirates First on the A380 from Heathrow is the standard we start from — the enclosed suite with its sliding doors, the shower spa before landing, the lounge at the back of the upper deck. The same aircraft flies nonstop from New York. Where a client prefers to break the trip, Qatar's Qsuite through Doha is the one we reach for.
- 02For the hotels: the Royal Suite at the Burj Al Arab when the occasion asks for it, a villa at the Bulgari on Jumeira Bay for the privacy and its own marina, The Lana on the Marasi water for the newest rooms in the city, One&Only for the older and quieter grandeur. We book the side that faces the water, never the road.
- 03Marhaba meet you at the aircraft door and walk you through immigration; a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley waits kerbside. For the Palm or the desert lodges, a helicopter from the airport sets you down in fifteen minutes rather than an hour in traffic.
- 04A night at Al Maha in the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve — a private pool, oryx at the fence, and silence an hour from the towers — is the thing most clients remember. We hold the table at the restaurant with no sign at the door, and private access to the top of the Burj Khalifa once the public floors have closed.
- 05One phone number, both partners behind it. We answer within twelve hours, wherever you are and whatever the hour in Dubai.
When To Go
November to March
The reason to come. Days in the mid-twenties, the sky clear, the desert cool enough to sleep out in. Christmas and the New Year are spoken for a year ahead, and we hold space in spring for the December to follow. Ramadan now falls in these months and shifts earlier each year; it changes the city's rhythm rather than closing it, and we plan around it.
April and October
The edges of the good weather — warm rather than hot, the crowds thinning, the calendar softer. The better suites open up without the winter scramble. Our preferred window for a first visit.
June to August
Forty degrees and more, and the city goes indoors — the cooled arcades, the aquariums, the long midday lunches. The finest suites stand open and the service turns its full attention to the few who stay. Evenings on the water are the reward for the heat of the day.