Our Stay at the Aloft Abu Dhabi

I realized, now that I’m not a broke college student anymore, that it’s hard to settle for a less than decent accommodation when traveling. Although I’m still not the type to splurge on hotels, I do value comfort and cleanliness much, much more now. Now that I’m also traveling more, it’s nice to come back to a quality hotel and not have to worry about a thang!

When searching for hotels, I’m still usually the budget friendly one, and N prefers to pay a small premium to have peace of mind that nothing weird pops up when we arrive at the hotel. With that said, we usually meet somewhere in the middle.

Aloft Abu Dhabi

After four days and four nights in Dubai, we rode a two hour bus to Abu Dhabi. The hotel we booked for Abu Dhabi, Aloft Abu Dhabi, turned out to be a match made for me!

Modern, pristine, and beamed with natural light – I swoon. You ever walk into a hotel and just FEEL the atmosphere lift you up immediately? That’s how I felt. I even contemplated skipping our desert safari to lounge in the hotel…

Bummer that we only had one night at the hotel, and we signed up for the desert safari during the day. No time to enjoy the amenities either 🙁 . Aloft has about three or four restaurants/bars including a rooftop bar and pool. Upon arrival, we received two cold drink vouchers (must have Gold status for this) and two hot drink vouchers. The front desk staff greeted us in a very friendly manner and handled everything professionally.

One common complaint that popped up on Trip Advisor was the wait to check-in. Since we arrived at the hotel at 10 AM (their check-in time is from 3PM and check-out at 12PM), our room wasn’t ready. All good because we headed out to go to the Grand Mosque. When we got back, we received the keys to our room without any delay (around 12PM).

Price

When we started looking for hotels in Abu Dhabi, we quickly found that prices were inflated because of a convention being held that week (specifically, the International Defense Exhibition and Conference). The nice thing about using points to book a hotel is that, with some exceptions, the points price doesn’t change with the cash price. This meant that, while Aloft’s cash price during that time was almost $500/night, they only wanted 4,000 Starpoints (Starwood Preferred Guest points) per night. Technically, we didn’t have 4,000 Starpoints, but guess what it costs to just buy the points? $140. So, as you can guess, we simply bought 4,000 Starpoints for $140 instead of paying the inflated $500 asking price. Final cost for the room ended up at around $155 because of tourist fees. For a 4 star hotel, this comes out to be a pretty sweet deal especially if you use points. 😉

Hotel Room

I can’t emphasize enough how much I liked this room. There was plenty of room for our suitcases to sprawl out, and the bathroom felt welcoming. As a germaphobe, I love when I could feel comfortable about the bathroom!

It’s weird how excited I can get when a hotel gives me good feels. 🙂 This reminds me of how I felt about the Hotel Chicago Downtown, Autograph Collection (see my mention of it in this post), which was awesome. So far, these two hotels stood out to me the most, as far as giving me the best value.

Other little details of the room include Bliss bathroom products, a Fatboy next to the bed, and a view of the Capital Gate building. Love it!!

When we came back from our desert safari around 9PM, we found a small array of desserts waiting for us in the room with a handwritten note. How lovely is that.

I had a perfect day and came back to a perfect room. Safe to say, I had a rock solid night of sleep! 🙂

— T.

A bean bag in the room!

Capital Gate building

*This post may contain affiliate links. As always, opinions are my own.