Renaissance Dubai, award-winning business hotel

Again the Dubai hotel sector is proving a leader in innovation and development, this time within a major chain. And what the Renaissance Dubai appears to have got right is a high quality of general service, a great selection of restaurants, good leisure facilities and space to relax.

This means that despite the highest levels of occupancy, the hotel still delivers a standard that customers appreciate. Indeed, so highly did they recommend the hotel on the feedback forms that the hotel bagged the Marriott Group's 2006 award for Customer Excellence Elite Recognition, and who knows a hotel better than its own clients?

But at first glance this is not the most impressive hotel in Dubai, or the Marriott chain. It is due for some upgrading this summer. Harry's Bar will go urban chic and the function rooms, lobby, club lounge, guest elevators and the aquarium lounge will get a makeover.

The Spice Island buffet

However, guests love the restaurants and bars. The Spice Island international buffet is well known in Dubai with the opportunity to eat and drink as much as you like according to three tariffs for tee total, standard or superior alcoholic beverages. There are different islands featuring Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Italian, Indian, Arabic and Mongolian cuisine.

On the same open kitchen theme you can choose fare from France, Italy, Morocco, Greece and Spain at the Mediterranean Sails restaurant. And to unwind head for the nearby Polynesian style Tiki Bar for cocktails with live music later in the evening.

This 281-room, low-rise hotel also has a Club floor with its own lounge and a slightly higher grade of room but all have benefited from the Marriott bed upgrading campaign of two years' ago which introduced a higher standard of bed throughout the group and upgraded the linen.

Generous leisure options

In addition guests are not short of leisure facilities in this hotel. There is a large outdoor swimming pool, Jacuzzi and bar; sauna and massage facilities alongside a small but well equipped gym; and a shopping arcade on the lobby level.

The whole hotel exudes a calm atmosphere and the spacious interior means that guests will not feel crowded however busy the hotel becomes. It matters not a great deal that the furniture and decor is getting past its best.

Guests see through such cosmetic niceties and are far more impressed by genuinely helpful and friendly service from General Manager Francisco Giles and his team, and they keep voting with their feet by going back again and again.