Coastal Calling: Delano Dubai Brings Its Iconic Miami Style To Bluewaters | Out of Office Spring 2025
A destination where raw nature takes a lead on luxury, the hotel is challenging convention, reimagining its signature style for its new Middle Eastern home…
The sound of crashing waves is an anomaly in Dubai, a city known for its calm coastlines. But the mellifluous tone of a susurrous sea is the vacation soundtrack you never knew you needed. And it’s all part of the charm of Delano Dubai, a new luxury enclave on Bluewaters from hospitality giants Ennismore, which interflows modernistic design with rustic, verdurous landscaping. From its wild coast to its botanical corners in a palette of vibrant green, this is Dubai, but not as you know it.
It’s the first Middle Eastern chapter of Delano’s renowned history, a story that began almost 30 years ago in Miami. With a vision to create something more modern and fresh than what was de rigueur, Delano Miami – at the hands of hotelier Ian Schrager and designer Philippe Starck – birthed an innovative take on design and guest experience that catapulted the hotel to icon status.
Now, Delano Dubai writes a new story.
Borrowing visual cues from its older sister, it weaves all the same modern magic into its home in the Emirate – a dynamic yet understated style that is a welcome interlude in a city too often defined by its opulence. Floor-to-ceiling windows cake the all-white lobby in sunlight, an easy introduction to a pared back design with chromatic injections that make the hotel feel, well, happy. An undercurrent of energy fizzes away, conversations whispered and shared over morning coffee, long lunches, languid pool days and after-dark antics.
Collectively conceived by Elastic Architects, SA Consultants, La Bottega Interiors, YDesign and Ennismore’s inhouse design team, the hotel’s aesthetic has a softness to it – no sharp edges, just long, continuous curvilinear lines, as one object, one space flows into the next. A mellow approach with maximum effect.
Take the hotel’s 251 guest rooms and suites. With With curved silhouettes, white oak flooring, lashings of natural daylight and soporific colour tones, they create a cocoon of soft minimalism. Each with a balcony or terrace overlooking the tree-studded gardens or the oscillating waves of the Arabian Gulf, they’re ripe for relaxation.
In the Delano Penthouse, privacy and seclusion are sacrosanct.
Spreading itself across the seventh floor, it’s the perfect blend of residential and ultra-luxury resort living, with five bedrooms, Zebrano marble bathrooms, a Bulthaup professional kitchen, dining room, entertainment space, two terraces, infinity pool and 24-hour butler service.
You needn’t stray far to continue the experience, though. With four pools and seven restaurants and bars, Delano Dubai has envisioned a destination all its own. Blue Door, the legendary, star-studded hero of Miami’s dining scene, is reimagined in Dubai bringing coastal Anatolian dishes to its secret garden setting; Tutto Passa inhabits the Amalfi Coast through a celebration of seafood and sunshine; while Rose Bar, all sultry with mirrored hallway, decadent red velvet interiors and clandestine corners, brings the night to life because, when the sun goes down the party starts.
For light repose the morning after, a beach walk or poolside siesta will be the tonic you need. The hotel’s private coastline stretches for 250 metres, its therapeutic waves and sea air an instant reviver. Sink into a cabana at Maison Revka, with its Slavic soul-meets-French elegance; try a taste of ‘elegant Japanese street food by the sea’ at Gohan, or head to the Med at La Cantine Beach, with its sporty-chic vibes, pickle ball court and custom-designed sports gear. And, of course, there’s the famous Delano Pool. With sky-tickling views of Ain Dubai, striped, white-and-yellow towels, palm tree sentinels and Delano’s iconic sunken furniture, it’s the social hive of the hotel.
It’s the little details that make the Delano ‘Delano.‘
Like the scalloped edges on its pool towels to continue those smooth lines; mini bars stocked with Humantra hydration supplements, eye patches and collagen; mini sweet trucks by the pool serving up childly frivolity; and witty expressions of character-driven hospitality from its staff.
But its real point of difference is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Delano Dubai turns luxury on its head for a more playful breed of guest wanting to rest and revel, relax and be revived all in one unaffected, unpretentious place.
As to those waves that will sing you to sleep each night, they’re the true treasure of the Delano Dubai experience. Because above and beyond the allure of luxury, they offer something no other destination has. Raw beauty.
For more information visit delanodubai.com
Photography by Žiga Mihelčič
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