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This 46-floor hotel opened in 2003 amid the building boom in the surrounding area, with not only 302 hotel rooms but also 126 serviced apartments operated by the hotel and office space in the same building. The entire hotel building was originally owned by a local conglomerate named Al Jaber Group (which is also behind another Shangri-La hotel in Abu Dhabi), but the hotel portion of it was auctioned off in 2020 after the group failed to pay off loans related to the building's construction.
The main hotel building had a distinctive Art Deco style, with its twin spires and granite facade undoubtedly modeled after the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. It had two basements, used for back-of-house areas and kitchens, while the ground floor featured a four-story atrium with the lobby lounge and a buffet restaurant named Dunes Café. The first floor was where most of the hotel's restaurants were located, with an aptly-named Balcony Bar overlooking the atrium, as well as the Dubai outpost of Shangri-La properties' Cantonese restaurant Shang Palace and a Vietnamese restaurant named Hoi An. The second floor featured a retail arcade, which originally was home to two restaurant concepts that had been discontinued long ago. The third floor had several meeting rooms in addition to a business center and the management offices. The fourth floor featured a health club which included a gymnasium, a yoga studio, and a squash court, as well as the hotel's spa and hair salon. A sky bridge leading to the roof of the adjacent parking garage, where an outdoor swimming pool and a tennis court were located, was also on this floor. Floors 5 to 8 had office space, while two double-height ballrooms were located on the ninth floor. Serviced apartments were located on floors 12 to 19, while most of the hotel's rooms and suites were on floors 20-27 and 29-40. The 41st floor had the executive-floor lounge, with a service mezzanine named floor "A" immediately above. The 42nd floor had another, much smaller health club for those staying in the executive-grade rooms and suites, highlighted by an indoor infinity pool overlooking the skyline of Dubai, as well as a sundeck with views of Burj Khalifa, as well as the lower floors of two presidential suites that occupied both the 42nd and 43rd floors. Floors 10, 11, 28, 44, and 45 were mechanical floors that were not served by the passenger elevators.
The building had 18 elevators supplied by KONE, consisting of six elevators for the hotel rooms, three apartment elevators, three office elevators, two banquet elevators, two service elevators, and two private elevators inside the presidential suites. In this video, the set of six elevators for the hotel rooms on the upper half of the building is featured. These belonged to Alta, KONE's first model specifically developed for high-rise applications, and unlike several neighboring buildings actually ran at a speed appropriate for the number of floors served. Being early 2000s KONE installations, these primarily had Delta fixtures highlighted by ThinLine hall stations and ELD indicators inside the cabs (although one of them was not working in the car featured in this video), which were hallmarks of many KONE units from that era. The COPs presumably used to have Delta ThinLine buttons also, though those had been replaced with Dewhurst products at some point. The LCD monitor above the doors in each cab featured a display style in line with KONE's latest corporate identity, though previously it most likely had resembled the what the elevators of the Rose Rayhaan hotel across the highway (which are also KONE Alta installations, albeit much slower) used to have. The cabs were dimly lit, featuring gray velvet cushions on the walls acting as noise insulation and floors finished with white marble, with Chinese window frame patterns on the bronze doors paying homage to the roots of the Shangri-La brand. The ride quality was very smooth, with a few but not uncomfortable lateral oscillations. Two out of the six cars provided access to the service mezzanine above the executive lounge, while the other three did not. Interestingly, the arrows on the floor indicators behaved similar to TK's American TAC controllers, with them either changing direction or going out as soon as the car began decelerating several floors prior to reaching the last assigned destination.
The office, banquet, and apartment elevators were not filmed, as the channel owner was unable to find them during this visit.
Manufacturer: KONE Middle East LLC
Model name: Alta
Year of commission: 2003
Loading: 1,350kg (2,980lbs)
Capacity: 18 persons
Full speed: 6m/s (1,200FPM)
Serviced floors: *G, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 (cars No. 1, 2, 4, and 5); *G, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, A, 42 (cars No. 3 and 6)