Royal Dubai | Burj Al Arab Stay, Helicopter Tour & VIP Access

I am 67 and my wife is 63. We celebrated 40 years of marriage at the Burj Al Arab. I need to be direct: I have stayed in 5-star hotels in India and abroad, including the Oberoi, the Taj, and the Four Seasons in various cities. Nothing I have experienced before resembles the Burj Al Arab. The moment our butler — a quiet, immaculate young man who seemed to anticipate needs before we expressed them — escorted us to our suite, we understood we had entered a completely different category of hospitality. Our suite had two floors, a staircase, and a wall of glass facing the Arabian Gulf. We had tea on our terrace watching container ships pass in the Gulf while the Burj Al Arab’s sail curved above us. The helicopter tour the next morning — seeing this building from the air, the building we had slept in, the building that had been my reference for all things extraordinary — simultaneously humbled and elevated the experience. This package is worth every rupee. Book it for a milestone. Book it for the memory it creates. Holiday Vibez: perfection from start to finish.

The Al Mahara dinner was the experience I will describe most to people who ask about this trip. We were taken by simulated submarine from the Burj Al Arab lobby — a theatrical descent — and arrived in a restaurant completely surrounded by a cylindrical aquarium. Sharks circled behind my wife’s head throughout dinner. I ordered the Norwegian lobster and my wife had the Chilean sea bass. The food quality was extraordinary. But the conversation between us — surrounded by sharks and rays and thousands of tropical fish, in the world’s most iconic hotel — was the most extraordinary dinner conversation we have had in 22 years of marriage. What do you talk about when you are surrounded by sharks in the Burj Al Arab? Apparently, the same things we always talk about. But with sharks. The Burj Khalifa Level 148 Lounge the previous day — Champagne at 555m, the entire city below us, our own observation space — was equally remarkable. Both of them, in the same 5-day package. Outstanding.

My four children gifted me this package for my retirement after 38 years as a doctor. I wept when they told me. I had watched the Burj Al Arab being built in photographs in 1999, I had shown my children images of it, I had said “one day.” One day came. The Rolls Royce at the airport — the hotel attendant waiting with a sign bearing my name, the cool leather interior, the water and dates waiting in the back. The bridge to the hotel. The atrium. The suite. The butler — who knew my name, my dietary preferences (I am vegetarian), and had already arranged with the kitchen. The Al Muntaha dinner — the waiter explained every dish with the precision of someone who had thought about food as art for their entire career. The helicopter the next morning — I have never been in a helicopter. Looking down at the Burj Al Arab from 1,000 feet, the building that had been my dream for 25 years, now the building I was flying away from after sleeping in it — I cannot find the words. Holiday Vibez made my retirement dream real. I will recommend them as long as I can speak.