AL MAHA Desert Resort & Spa, the luxurious desert retreat owned by Emirates Hotels & Resorts, has collected another Condé Nast Traveller Readers’ Travel Award.
Jumping six places in its overall rating from last year, Al Maha was the only Dubai hotel to be listed in the prestigious top 20 list, for Overseas Leisure Hotels.
For the second year running, readers have placed Al Maha within the top 20 overseas leisure hotels in the highly competitive Middle East, Africa and Indian Ocean region. The influential readers’ survey of the world’s best destinations is conducted annually by Condé Nast Traveller. Moving up six places from the 2007 ranking to number 14 in the 2008 survey, the overall rating of the property improved from 79.59 per cent o 83.81 per cent.
Condé Nast Traveller is one of the world’s leading travel magazines, and the awards, now in their 10th year, are highly acclaimed in the industry. Resorts and hotels are ranked according to a number of different criteria including service, standard of accommodation, environmental friendliness, leisure facilities and overall ambience.
The top 20 listing of overseas leisure hotels in the region included Singita Private Game Reserve in South Africa, the Cape Grace Hotel in Cape Town, Soneva Gili in the Maldives and North Island in the Seychelles.
Tony Williams, senior vice president, resorts and projects at Emirates Hotels & Resorts said, “This is a great tribute to the staff of Al Maha, and we are obviously delighted to have received such a great accolade – in particular when it comes from the guests. Moving up in the ranking by six places this year highlights that year on year the resort and the experience at Al Maha remains not only consistent, but is improving against this world-class standard.”
He said, “The criteria against which we have been judged are integral to our own product philosophy, and it is heartening to see that across the company Emirates is pushing the boundaries in product and service excellence alongside some of the other great resorts in the world.”
Al Maha, which opened in 1999, combines a luxurious desert resort with a major nature reserve in the Arabian Desert so helping to establish Dubai’s environmental awareness.