Starstruck

A good hotel is a place to rest your head; A great hotel has the power to transform the travel landscape. For Travel + Leisure's third annual It List, we trekked (literally) across the globe to determine the select properties you'll be going to next. Here, from beach resorts to city hideaways, our editors' picks for the best new hotels of 2008.

The Burj Al Arab: Dubai

Since it opened in 1999, the Burj has come to epitomise the tenacious rise of the Gulf Peninsula, where fishing villages are being transformed into high-rise dream factories.

Imagine that the creative urges of Liberace, Liza Minnelli and Michael Jackson had been unleashed on a 321-metre skyscraper astride its own man-made island. You might end up with DayGlo decoration, myriad gold leaf (more than 1500 square metres, all 24 carat), a torrent of marvellous water features and an entire wall, more than 200 metres high, with no glass, no concrete, just a swath of fibre-woven Teflon that evokes the lateen sails of dhows.

Put that same trio in charge of designing hotel amenities and they might conjure such extravagances as champagne and strawberry baths, a pillow menu for children, rotating four-poster beds, the world's largest fleet of Rolls-Royces and a minimum of 14 phones per suite. All of which exist, often in shimmering technicolour, at Dubai's Burj Al Arab. Such trifling considerations as taste have not hindered the Burj's fortunes. Since it opened in 1999, it has come to epitomise the tenacious rise of the Arabian Peninsula, where humble fishing villages, awash with petro-dollars, are being transformed into high-rise dream factories.

The Burj has become much more than a hotel; it is a destination in its own right, a modern marvel that has captured the imagination of the masses who flock here. It has also aroused the imaginations of the world's top hoteliers, sparking the equivalent of a modern-day gold rush to the Gulf. Leading operators are staking out patches of desert for their castles in the sand, each one promising unprecedented levels of decadence.

As the "Tower of the Arabs" prepares to celebrate its 10th birthday next year, its mantle as the world's most opulent hotel is under siege. Dozens - hundreds - of hotels are about to open or are under construction in Dubai alone, and all intend to be five-star fabulous.

In 2007 the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) prepared an exhaustive file listing all the major developments underway in the emirate. It documented entire cities set to rise from the desert - like Festival City, Healthcare City, Media City - and extravagant infrastructure investments such as the 75-kilometre Dubai metro service (opening 2009) and Falcon City of Wonders, where tourists can ogle at replicas of the Lighthouse at Alexandria, say, or the Great Wall of China.

By far the biggest presence will be hotel operators. The DTCM's dossier reads like an A-List of accommodation chains - Fairmont, Intercontinental, Armani, Emirates, Four Seasons, Trump, to name a few - seasoned with a triumph of superlatives. Behold "the tallest hotel serviced apartment tower in the world" (Marina 101), "the world's largest hotel" (the 6500-room Asia Asia Hotel, "the largest spa in the Middle East" (Taj Exotica), the world's most exclusive condominiums" (Palazzo Versace).

Dubai is not a city known for its restraint. Hence the visible-from-space Palm Jumeirah development alone will contain more than 30 new hotels. Mega-developments such as the 10-kilometre Bawadi enclave in Dubailand will contribute another 50 to the city's already teeming hospitality scene. And then there's Atlantis, The Palm, part of which will be built under the sea. The submarine view has been transformed into the Lost City of Atlantis, miraculously rediscovered amid an immense aquarium stocked with hundreds of species including sharks and manta rays. When guests tire of gazing out of their three-storey goldfish bowl they can brave the waterslides built into a "Mesopotamian-style" ziggurat or dine on cuisine bearing the celebrity endorsement of superchefs Nobu Matsuhisa, Giorgio Locatelli or Michel Rostang.

However mesmerising the Dubai phenomenon is, it is only part of the story. The entire Gulf region is where oil turns to gold and where gold, in turn, is transfiguring these formerly barren sheikhdoms and kingdoms into a new world empire.

And in this empire, it's the commoners who get to stay in the palaces.

Emirates Palace: Abu Dhabi

The palace is an eight-storey confection of arabesque domes, Swarovski crystal chandeliers, marble and pure gold, that took 20,000 workers three years to complete.

Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi was conceived as a gilded citadel for the Gulf Cooperation Council, an elite regional union comprising their majesties and highnesses from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain.

Enclosed within an 85-hectare seafront compound, the palace is an eight-storey confection of 114 arabesque domes, 1002 Swarovski crystal chandeliers, myriad marble and more than 8,000 kilograms of pure gold, that took 20,000 workers three years to complete. Its owner, the Abu Dhabi Government, declines to reveal how much money was lavished on its construction but speculators put the figure at at least $3 billion. Given the GCC has only two summits a year, that's a lot of money to spend on an empty palace.

So the government called in Europe's oldest luxury accommodation group, Kempinski, and this magnificent edifice was opened to the paying public in March 2005. It was then, and remains now, one of the most expensive hotels ever built. Perhaps even the most expensive.

Every visitor to Abu Dhabi is welcome to come here and marvel. The vast central atrium, its floor inlaid with 13 of the finest marbles and its roof sealed by a 42-metre-wide dome finished in a mosaic of silver and gold glass tiles, attracts a constant stream of tourists. They order coffee in the 300-seat cafe and gasp as it arrives on a silver tray with one perfect date in a patty case and a single chocolate flecked with gold leaf - a taste of the high life for just $9.40, excluding tip. Emirates Palace may seem remarkably democratic and accessible, but there is an inner sanctum here that mere mortals can never enter.

The hotel's fifth and eighth floors remain off-limits to ordinary guests because they are reserved for the exclusive use of the GCC rulers or visiting heads of state (George W Bush slept there during his visit to the Gulf in January). The fifth floor is a dedicated reception area for the rulers' suites, while the eighth and highest floor houses their private domains.

The closest that the average tourist can get to the sumptuousness of the sheiks' quarters is to book a Palace Suite on the sixth or seventh floor. Each of these apartments is served by a private lift and a butler who, in the manner of the Middle East, is used to fulfilling any request at any time of the day.

The most expensive carpets in the world are produced in Iran, and so the carpets here - exquisite, pastel wonders - are, naturally, from Iran. The sinks are forged from pure silver (gold in the rulers' suites), the walls are finished in pressed silk, the cutlery is Christofle and the crockery is hand-painted with gold. Just as you'd expect if you were paying about $17,000 for one night's accommodation including airport transfers by Rolls-Royce and all meals.

For $840 a night, you can bed down in a Coral Grand Room in one of the two wings off the central palace. Coral Grand Rooms have garden views and none of the deluxe trappings of the suites, but the furnishings are tasteful, echoing the muted hues of the emirate's desert sands, and guests are lavished with flowers and fruit and have access to the same facilities (gym, pools, beach) as everyone else. It seems a reasonable price to pay to stay at the most expensive hotel ever built.

Emirates Palace may not yet have usurped the mantle of the Middle East's most opulent from the Burj Al Arab, but when pop prince Justin Timberlake came to the Gulf in December for his one and only concert in the region, he performed in Abu Dhabi, at Emirates Palace. The Burj didn't get a look-in.

Sharq Village: Qatar

The citizens of Qatar are traditionalists at heart. in Doha you only need to visit the old souq for a taste of the bedouin customs and inheritance that have shaped this dynamic city.

Justin Timberlake would probably not be welcome to perform in Qatar, the oil- and gas-rich sheikhdom shaped like a left hand jutting into the Arabian Sea. His 2006 album, the explicitly libidinous FutureSex/LoveSounds, was banned in this conservative state of Sunni Wahhabi Muslims.

The extremely wealthy citizens of Qatar are traditionalists at heart. Whereas Dubai and Abu Dhabi lack a visibly distinctive culture, in Doha you only need to visit the Old Souk for a taste of the Bedouin customs and inheritance that have shaped this dynamic city. Alternatively you could book into the Ritz-Carlton-run Sharq Village and Spa for a first-hand experience of the indigenous culture. Sharq (it means Orient) is a faithful recreation of a fishing village that once stood on this spot beside Doha Bay. Fishermen, pearl divers and their families lived here for generations before their village fell into disuse.

The emir of Qatar, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, has, in little more than a decade, shaped this infertile land into a thoroughly modern Muslim powerhouse. But he is also a man of nostalgia and pride, and it was he - along with His Excellency Sheikh Nawaf bin Jassim bin Jabor al-Thani, chairman of Qatar National Hotels Company - who oversaw the meticulous detailing of the 174-room resort hotel. The result is an encomium to Qatar's past.

The design team toured museums and delved deep into the nation's history to identify uniquely Qatari heritage and customs, and then applied their learning to the creation of Sharq. Five years in the planning and two years to build - the final stages opened in December - the resort combines a marbled sheik's palace, 14 courtyard villas and a $21 million spa.

Inside the palace is the reception lobby, richly adorned in the elegant, slightly rustic Qatari manner. Gorgeous antiques - the three brass chandeliers in the lobby were family heirlooms bought from the oldest house in Qatar - blend with the latest comforts and technology.

All the furniture was custom-made, most of it in Lebanon but also South Africa, Morocco and Syria. All 14 villas, each housing 14 rooms and suites, function like boutique hotels within the one resort and the decor is different in each. Elaborate four-poster beds mimic those habitually crafted for wealthy Qatari traders, right down to the decorative motifs etched into the Lebanese cedar wood.

This attention to detail extends beyond the physical, and ensures the Sharq experience is not simply a faithfully recreated museum piece. The hotel's pastry chef, Nicole Illa, is ex-Harrods of London, now baking date muffins and Arabian pastries for the daily high tea service synonymous with Ritz-Carlton properties. In the buffet restaurant Al Liwan, ingredients are flown in regularly from Lebanon to guarantee authentic Middle Eastern flavours. (Al Liwan's food is renowned in Doha; members of the royal family eat there at least once a week.) And in the cigar bar, smokers can choose from 40 cigar varieties or have a bespoke smoke rolled for them by the in-house torcedora, a Cuban lady. Meanwhile, on the shisha terrace, butlers glide between canopied booths serving local beverages and preparing shisha blends.

The entire resort, landscaped with fountains and gardens and pools, has been embraced into the national heritage alongside desert fortresses, evocative souks and fellow newcomers such as I M Pei's stunning Museum of Islamic Arts and Santiago Calatrava's National Museum of Photography. Another 40 hotels are due to arrive in Doha within the next two years, but probably none will come close to the cultural sincerity of Sharq.

Banyan Tree Al Areen Desert Resort and Spa: Bahrain

Each of the villas is enclosed in a compound with interiors of Italian marble, Sri Lankan and Indian teak and Iranian carpets - a marriage of Arabian and Asian styling.

It's a measure of the mettle - or perhaps the blind faith - of the Middle East's five-star upstarts that a remote plot in the Kingdom of Bahrain is now home to the region's first Banyan Tree resort. It seems a surprising choice of real estate for a premium Asian hotel brand whose success has been built on its "signature blend of romance, rejuvenation and exotic sensuality". But this is a prime example of the build-it-and-they-will-come confidence of these immigrant entrepreneurs.

The Banyan Tree Al Areen Desert Resort and Spa is the showpiece tenant of the $1 billion-plus Al Areen development, located in the listless central desert of Bahrain. When complete, the project will comprise upmarket homes, resorts and entertainment. At present there is just the Banyan Tree, the Lost Paradise of Dilmun Water Park, the Al Areen Wildife Park and a lot of machinery installing the infrastructure - roads, electricity, water, landscaping - required to fashion an oasis from the emptiness.

The resort is reached via a 30-minute drive down the Sheikh Khalifa Bin Salman Highway from the Bahraini capital Manama (Ma-NAH-ma), past bumpy paddocks of millennia-old tombs and the Formula One racetrack. The final stretch follows a dusty artery - watch out for the trucks - until it meets an oversized banner welcoming the king, His Majesty Sheikh Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa, to Banyan Tree. It's there just in case he decides to drop by.

Behind the retaining wall lies a 13-hectare sprawl of glamorous towers and pavilions, water features and foliage. Each of the resort's 78 villas is enclosed in a private compound with pool and Jacuzzi and sophisticated interiors of Italian marble, Sri Lankan and Indian teak and Iranian carpets - a happy marriage of Arabian and Asian styling. Rooms are perfumed with the Banyan Tree "scent of the day" and fitted with black stone infinity baths strewn with rose petals, and showers that become steam rooms at the push of a button. You can shower outside too, amid the golden fruit of the banana trees in your private courtyard garden.

The single most astonishing feature of this extraordinary One Thousand and One Nights fantasy is the 10,000-square-metre spa, the largest (for the time being) in the Gulf. This is not a mere collection of treatment rooms and Asian-inspired therapies, but an aquatic wonderland billed by Banyan Tree as "the world's most extensive spa and hydrothermal garden". The latter comprises 15 intricately tiled, beehive-shaped cabins like a series of sensual way stations on the path to personal fulfilment. At the flick of a switch, the mechanical heavens open to recreate a "monsoon shower experience", available in either "summer storm" or "arctic winter" flavours. A steam grotto promises to stimulate circulation and relax the mind; a neighbouring "igloo" is stocked with ice to rub on the body and tighten the skin. The pelotherapy chamber fuses herbs and steam to restore the skin's natural glow; the brine cavern aims to purify and detoxify.

There is an air of the outlandish to this therapeutic theme park, but the experience is as much about enjoyment as it is about any health benefits that might flow from the shower roses. (And this is not an entirely po-faced environment; one feature, the "cool rainmist corridor" - through which guests stroll first under a cool mountain mist, then a revitalising massage, then a cascading waterfall - is known by resort staff as the "car wash".) To finish, the spa's Vitality Pool contains nine hydrotherapy stations where jets and spouts alternately massage and soothe, from the neck to the toes.

The central paradox of the awe-inspiring palace hotels colonising the Arabian Gulf is whether the trend is simply a 24-carat case of the emperor's new clothes, or are these astonishing establishments really redefining five-star standards? One British writer described Banyan Tree Bahrain as "the silliest hotel in the Middle East … an idea so comically awful it can be crossed off the must-visit list for good". Me? I had the opposite reaction; I fantasised about living there for a while.

Guide to Middle East hotels

WHERE TO STAY

Burj Al Arab
One-bedroom deluxe suites from $2800 a night.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates;
+971 4 301 7777; www.jumeirah.com

Emirates Palace
Doubles from $840 a night.
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates;
+971 2 690 9000; www.emiratespalace.com

Sharq Village and Spa
Doubles from $560.
Doha, Qatar;
+974 425 6666; www.sharqvillage.com

Banyan Tree Desert Spa and Resort
One-bedroom deluxe pool villas from $680.
Al Areen, Bahrain;
+973 1784 5000; www.banyantree.com

GETTING THERE

Dubai-based Emirates Airlines and Abu Dhabi's Etihad both have daily direct flights from Australia to the UAE. Return economy high-season fares with Emirates cost from $2773 ex-Perth and $2925 ex-Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane (the Brisbane flight goes via Singapore). Return fares with Etihad start from $2590 ex-Sydney and Brisbane.

From New Zealand, fares ex-Auckland and Christchurch are from $2595.

WHEN TO GO

Avoid the relentless desert heat of the northern summer, when temperatures hover in the mid-40s. November to March is pleasant at night but still hot during the day.