No question it is the best hotel on the Sheikh Zayed strip but as the price of crude rises by $10, the room rate moves $20. It is now extremely expensive and $700 seems to be the average rate that one can get.

Still, it has a great buzz packed with prospectors, hopefuls, deal doers and those that hanker after them.

Rooms are "colourful" rather than tasteful but the Apex suites have a suitable touch of early James Bond about them. As commented elsewhere, the tellies could do with an update and a few films wouldn't go amiss as the DVD collection is mainly in the luggage of other guests.

Service in the club lounge is very good and welcoming, although tangy camel milk is only available in the Mosaic restaurant.

Pool is bigger than it looks but can get horribly crowded at weekends and very hot given all the glass reflecting onto the searing flesh below.

Restaurants: Rib Room, Japapanes and Lebanese all very good. Vu, not particularly noteworthy and the view is of other construction sites and scrub.

H20 spa, only for men and with male therapists. Treatments are good and they are skilled, if you like a massage that is of bone crushing severity and expunges all the air from your cavities, this is the place.

It is very convenient for the DIFC, at least in theory. They need to employ some boy scouts to help you cross the roads as pedestrians are considered fair game for the high speed drivers. However, only the poor walk in the UAE so it is assumed you drive everywhere.

Tip: if you are doing a number of countries in the Region in a short space of time, don't choose Dubai as the hub. Traffic terrible and the airport is slow and looks like a casualty clearing station with bodies strewn everywhere wiating for connections to disparate locations. Much better bet is Bahrain which is quick, efficient and blessed by the fabulous Ritz Carlton.

My husband and I stayed here for four nights earlier this month, partly for business, partly for pleasure. We had a wonderful room, with huge bathroom and plenty of storage space, on the 19th floor.

The business centre provided excellent overnight service on a print job, which though expensive was 100% correct, a small miracle when my husband wasn't around to check they were on the right track.

We asked the hotel to provide a car one afternoon which was a great service at a fairly reasonable price, but with hindsight could have been achieved at a fraction of that price with an ordinary taxi. Something to bear in mind if budget is an issue.

Only one small complaint about this lovely place. One morning we went down around 11.45 to the cafe/brasserie for an early lunch. They had finished serving breakfast but not yet started the lunch service, which was fair enough, but they then had trouble providing anything from the simple 24 hour menu. This was a minor issue as we were having a great time, but they really shouldn't say a place is open 24 hours if it isn't - and a meal in the late morning isn't that outlandish.

Great location in Dubai's business district. Great in-house food outlets... TV's are too small... too far away from the bed... Internet access very very slow.... Must see is VU's bar on 51st floor.

Have never been through such a horrific experience in my life before, I was booked at a corporate of around $350 and i had arrived on an emirates flight which was delayed for 5 hours and once i got to the hotel it was after 2am and having got to the check in desk they didn't have my reservation! Not only that but they were also completely full and couldn't offer me any rooms, so i waited about 10minutes after which they claimed they could give us a room but at a rate of $700, ludicrous price but what choice did i have at around 2.30 am, i couldn;t get a taxi to drive me and the wife around dubai at that time of the morning looking for a hotel... so i had no choice and took it, i requested for a non smoking room on a high fllor with a nice view, when i got tot he room it was a smoking room on a medium floor with absolutely no view exceot for that of the back of the hotel! I then called up reception and 2minutes later they moved me to the 39th flooe non smoking room with a nice view of sheikh zayed rd, where did all these rooms miraculously appear from i wonder and why weren;t they simply offered to me in the first place!?

The decor in the room was very poor and dated, perhaps i would not have complained if i wa paying half my rate byt when i keep that in mind you have to expect alot more from the hotel, a few years ago when this hotel opened it would have been sufficient but now its not quite up to the standard of other rooms, they didn't even have a flat screen tv in the room, those old style tvs and it was pretty small! Bathrooms were also quite small compared to oher hotels and although i couldn;t fault the service they seriously need to do something about the rooms...

Eventually i checked out in the morning and found a much better rate and room at the shangrila.

I would not reccommend this hotel for anyone unless it was at a very good rate, yes the location is good if you are working at the dubai financial centree but other then that i found nothing good about the hotel, back in the day it was inm its prime but no longer.... Also there is absolutely no ventilation in the rooms, no windows anywhere...