New luxury hotels 2018- Bulgari Resort Dubai, the most expensive hotel

The Bulgari Resort Dubai only opened late last year – 7 December – but is set to be the most expensive hotel in the city, bringing with it private residences, mansions and a yacht marina beside. With all this, Bulgari Resort Dubai has already been crowned one of the best new luxury hotels 2018.

Located on the artificial island Jumeira Bay, the resort is designed to be more ‘like a Mediterranean village’ than yet another colossal skyscraper in the Dubai skyline. The creative force behind the lavish 158,000-sqm resort, multidisciplinary Italian design studio Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel, is no stranger to the international Bulgari chain; having previously designed Bulgari Hotels in Milan, Bali, London, and Beijing.

Each hotel simultaneously preserves several iconic characteristics of the luxury brand while incorporating influences from each location. However, while expressing Balinese architectural forms with the Bulgari material palette is a rather straightforward approach, in Dubai, Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel strikes, with low-rise architecture, and the 101 rooms and suites across just four floors, the feeling of “most expensive hotel” becomes by far, more understated!

In extreme contrast with the 161 floors of the 828-m-high Burj Khalifa, the resort has only four floors, encouraging guests to actually stroll from the yacht club on the beach to the shops to the suites.

This being the city’s most expensive hotel, there is also, somewhat crucially, a superlative spa, where real gold mosaic tiles, green onyx, and Afyon marble decorate the cabana-lined swimming pool, traditional-style hammam, and relaxation areas.

However, the architects are not the only Italian design influence at play in the space. Furniture brand Flexform also had a hand in the making of the premier hospitality destination, providing many of the furnishings – all of which were designed by Antonio Citterio himself.

Of all the designers that Flexform has partnered with since the 1960s, Citterio has contributed the most to the history of the company, has been writing and translating its values into objects for forty years. Now, the two Italian powerhouses have come together to create this extraordinary Bulgari Resort Dubai.