Despite my prying, the Burj Al Arab’s management wouldn’t reveal its construction cost, but according to Forbes it was $1 billion (£800 million): hardly pocket change, even with the UAE’s vast wealth. It took just five years to build, two of which were spent creating the artificial island on which it sits – connected to the “mainland” by a bridge.
Up close, its 56-storey scale is almost too much to take in: you enter the lobby at the base of its 180-metre-tall atrium, the world’s largest for a hotel, with the “sail” soaring above you. I found it exhilarating – and that’s without the leaping indoor fountains, the millions of mosaic tiles, the swirling hand-woven carpets and the gold, gold, gold. It was this lavish look that, in 1999, inspired a journalist to erroneously dub the Burj a “seven-star” property; the rating stuck, though it is “only a five-star in official terms.
