This hotel does not need a refurb as others suggest, infact it makes the holiday. The hotel staff cannot do enough for you whether it's in your room, the 5 restaurants they have on the resort or in reception. You can arrange your excertions with Desert Travel who has a gorgeous agent by the name of "Miranda" that will help you. Dubai is not cheap so it's nice to have an actual hotel that offers half board, take the option if you can as it saves you lots of money and the food is no different to what you get outside. It's a 40mins taxi ride into Dubai city and costs between 70-90AED depending if you use the hotel taxi or a normal taxi (hotel taxis are usually BMW, Lexus etc). Make sure you got to the captains bar after a nice meal then have a drink and smoke on some Shisha which is a flavoured bubble pipe. It has a private beach and 3 pools. There's peacocks on the resort grounds and you always see one walking about somewhere. This hotel is really good and if your looking for a good deal in such an expensive, upcoming city then this is the hotel for you. Plus you get to come back and relax on a beach, in the peace and quiet away from the noisy construction city of Dubai. A great hotel, beautiful city and great, friendly people. Hope this helps!

I booked a sea view double room in the Jebel Ali Hotel. The hotel itself is part of the Jebel Ali golf resort and spa complex.

The room was a good size with a king size bed, desk, small sofa and a decent bathroom with a shower over the bath. The room was clean and modern with the all important air conditioning working and easy to use. There was also a small balcony, which my first impressions was that it was too small...then I opened the patio door to be hit by a wall of heat, won't be sitting out there then, but was utilised as an excellent towel drying area!

That staff at this hotel/resort were very polite, spoke excellent English and were very helpful. Nothing was too much trouble. I checked in at midnight and the reception seemed to be fully manned, likewise when I checked out at 4am.

The resort has many restaurants and bars. The main on in the Jebel Ali hotel is Ibn Majed. This is where the breakfast was served each morning. I've read varying reports on other reviews on the food served here, for what it's worth I can't really complain. The hotel does carry a five star rating, and I'm not sure that a self service buffet would be what some five star regulars would expect? The food was well set out in hot plates and covered, there was plenty of choice, both hot and cold. The main plus point for me was "eggs corner" where a member of staff would cook you your eggs just how you wanted them, I certainly missed that this morning back home when I had to make my own scrambled eggs!

During my visit I ate a few evening meals at the resort. One night I went to Shooters, a steakhouse situated at the Jebel Ali shooting range. To get to this restaurant you take a complimentary shuttle bus a few miles to the gun club. The restaurant offers a panoramic view of the shooting range and is set out a little like a Berni Inn. The menu was limited, but the portions generous. A far better restaurant was the La Traviata Italian restaurant on the ground floor. Again the menu wasn't massive, but like Shooters the portions were excellent. There was an option to start with a visit to the salad bar, forget your Pizza Hut experiences with salad bars, this one was fantastic. You could help yourself to cured meat, salads, cheese, giant prawns, squid, sun dried tomatoes and olives.

Also at the resort was a Spa. I didn't use this but my girlfriend did. She had a few treatments one afternoon and was very impressed and relaxed afterwards. The price of the treatments wasn't included in our package, but I'm told they were reasonable compared to what they would cost in the UK.

There is also a golf course in the resort; sadly I'm not a golfer so I can't comment on the facilities or the course. After speaking with the golf manager one evening he did say that you have to look out for Peacocks on the course as they roam free in the resort.

The location of the hotel is little out of the hustle and bustle of Dubai, but is linked to the main tourist areas by a large highway. It took about 45 minutes by car to get from the airport, but at the time of night I arrived the legendary Dubai traffic had subsided somewhat. During our stay we took a taxi to the Gold Souq in Deira. This taxi ride took over an hour from the Mall of the Emirates! The resort operates a free shuttle bus to the Ibn Battuta Mall, the Mall of the Emirates, the Gold & Diamond Park and in peak hours the Wild Wadi water park. As July is not the busiest time of the tourist calendar in Dubai there were plenty of seats available on the coach, but in peak times you can pre book your seat. As recommended by a previous reviewer of this hotel I took the coach to the Mall of the Emirates and then got a taxi from there into Bur Dubai or Deira - saved a few AED that way!

One of the main advantages of being out of town is you are away from the main building work that seems to go on around the clock in Dubai. That's not to say that you are totally excused from cranes and diggers. Just off shore from the Hotels private beach construction work has commenced on the Jebel Ali Palm Island. It appears to be in its early stages and there are no buildings being constructed as yet, they are preparing the ground work. This does create a little noise but for the majority of my stay it was the low bass rumble of building machinery. Having said that from Thursday to my departure on Saturday there were a couple of JCB diggers operating on the palm shore nearest the private beach that were moving large boulders that caused quite a bit of noise and carried on well into the night. This was audible through the double glazing of the hotel room.

Talking to various taxi drivers and tour guides it looks like there will be a large development in the near future just inland from the resort, I noticed the area had been advertised from the main highway as being bigger than Hong Kong and would involve creating a water inlet not far from the hotel. How much disruption to guests this would cause is difficult to say at this early stage though.

All in all my stay at the Jebel Ali Hotel was excellent, I hope that as the building work on the Jebel Ali Palm Island doesn't ruin the atmosphere at the resort...only time will tell?

We have just returned from 6 wonderful days at the Jebal Ali Resort . The hotel is magnificent and we have never experienced such incredible service before. It was so lovely that it was hard to drag ourselves away from the hotel to go to a Shopping Mall !!!. In fact we didn't bother with down town Dubai , When driving to the hotel we where a little concerned with the construction and dust ,but once we arrived at the resort ,it was an Oasis in this construction desert

We stayed on the 5th Floor level with its own concierge and club lounge where we had own own breakfast , soft drinks ( all day ) and a sundowner hour from 6 till 7 with a different cocktail each night
The pool is lovely, and is right next to the private beach ,which was as warm as a bath , temprature was around 39 C and was a worry before we arrived but with the service and availability of sun beds and cooled water ,was not a problem and if we got to hot we just went upto the 5th floor and chilled out
Meals where included in the deal and could be used in the two buffet restauaruts or we could use a allocation 150 to a meal in the other restauraents all meals where excellent and had great choices
The Golf course was in very good condition and we where well looked after during the round ,with very cold towels and very cheap cold drinks

My girlfriend and I spent two fantastic weeks at the Jebel Ali Golf Resort and Spa Hotel in June 2008. The hotel was excellent. Everyone was so friendly and made you feel so welcome and nothing was ever too much. We stayed in a standard golf room which for the two of us was fine and it had everything we needed including a balcony overlooking the 9 hole golf course. We spent alot of our time on the hotel's private beach or by the hotels' pools. It was hot however there was a cool breeze blowing off the Gulf so it wasn't too bad and you aclimatised to the heat. The hotel runs a shuttle bus service to some of the main attractions in Dubai e.g. Mall of Emirates, IBN Battuta Mall, Wild Wadi about 3 times a day. However if you want to get into the centre of Dubai you would need to get a taxi.

Dubai itself there is alot of development going on and it did make you feel like you were in one massive building site however it didn't spoil the holiday and there are plenty of things to do to detract you from this.

We went on a half day city tour organised through Desert Adventures which was interesting. Also we went on a Desert Safari through Arabian Adventures which involved "dune bashing". camel ride, experiencing arabic food at a bedouin which also included belly dancing. It was fantastic experience and would recommend it to anyone!

There is so much to see and do in Dubai and it's surrounding area. 2 weeks is not enough and so we hope to go back there next year.

Overall it was an excellent holiday and definitely recommend the Jebel Ali Golf Resort and Spa hotel.