What’s the story?
The Fairmont is positioned on the main trunk of The Palm. We teamed our visit to this beach club with a trip to Riva too (on the other side of the Palm trunk), which is only a short 10 minute walk away (don’t believe Google maps, it’s not 30 minutes!). We were using our Privilee membership (see here for more info on Privilee), but it’s also open to walk in day guests too and prices vary so have a look before you go.
The hotel
The arrival and lobby entrance of this hotel is grand as you’d expect from the Fairmont, with a huge window as a central focus for the reception area with views towards the beach. This might sound weird, but there’s something about Dubai hotels – they always smell incredible! Perhaps I should be saying the same about other hotels worldwide, but the different variations of Oud (or Agarwood) (a very expensive ingredient that makes this beautiful scent!) make these hotels stand out in the fragrance stakes.
Beach & Pool area
From the main lobby, we headed down an equally grand staircase into the reception area of the gym (and nearby Flow Kitchen – see the full review on this brunch here). Once outside, there’s two pool areas – one dedicated for families with children, and then a separate adults only pool. We were heading to the latter, but from what we saw the kids area looked great, although it was pretty busy during our visit.
Separating the kids pool and adults only area is the access down to the beach. The beach has some of the best views I’ve seen so far over to the Marina – perfect for photos. It’s worth noting, that as the Palm is still being developed, you can expect some work to be taking place around the area. When we visited there was work next to the beach and beside the adults only pool area, but it wasn’t a big disruption or issue for us (but maybe we are accustomed to building work in Dubai now!!) We decided to base ourselves by the pool and check out the facilities.
Access to the beach
Marina view from the beach
More on the facilities
The adults area has a feature pool which is split across two levels. It has a fairly large area for loungers that are not too close together (always important!). This isn’t on the scale on some of the other resorts, such as Mina Seyahi (The Westin), but it’s still a pretty big pool. Probably not one for proper swimming, but we were definitely just here to chill so that suited us. It was busy but it was still very relaxing. The area is also surrounded with lots of palm trees, so plenty of shade if you are looking for it.
Food & Drink
The pool bar serves to beds as well as having a table area and we had a few drinks during our visit. It’s standard Dubai prices (so not the cheapest). There’s 20% off here for Privilee members so factor that in if you are using this card. If not then it’s worth making use of happy hour at the pool bar from 5pm. There’s also happy hours that follow this one in some of the other restaurants inside the Fairmont if you wanted to enjoy a few sundowners and make an evening of it. See their website for more information on the offers available.
Note about leaving, consider your timing!! We had trouble getting a taxi as we left around 5.30pm. Traffic getting off the Palm can be challenging, so again getting sundowners and waiting until a bit later might not be such a bad idea. Any excuse!