Where to stay in Dubai

Deira has easily the city’s biggest selection of budget hotels (by Dubai’s standards!), with literally dozens of cheap and comfortable places around the Gold Souk and along Sikkat al Khail Road. There are also innumerable lower mid-range places clustered together in the Al Rigga district, plus a few top-end establishments located alongside the Creek. In terms of area highlights, it remains the city’s best place for wandering, and even a short exploration will uncover a kaleidoscopic jumble of cultures, with Indian curry houses jostling for space with Iranian grocers, Somali shisha-cafés and backstreet mosques - not to mention an endless array of shops selling everything from formal black abbeya (male and female robes) to belly-dancing costumes.

There isn’t a huge selection of places to stay in the inner suburbs, although the area does boast Dubai’s two finest city hotels - the opulent Raffles and the idyllic Park Hyatt. Fringing the southern and eastern edges of the city centre - and separating it from the more modern areas beyond - is a necklace of low-key suburbs: Garhoud, Oud Metha, Karama and Satwa. Southeast of Deira, workaday Garhoud is home to the Dubai Creek Golf Club, with its famously futuristic clubhouse, and the adjacent yacht club, where you’ll find a string of attractive waterside restaurants alongside the lovely Park Hyatt hotel. Directly over the Creek, Oud Metha is home to the quirky Wafi complex and the lavish Khan Murjan Souk, while west of here the enjoyably downmarket suburbs of Karama and Satwa are both interesting places to get off the tourist trail and see something of local life among the city’s Indian and Filipino expats, with plenty of cheap curry houses and shops selling designer fakes.

Sheikh Zayed Road is lined with a long sequence of mainly upmarket hotels aimed mainly at visiting businessmen, with superb views and classy facilities - although, of course, no beach. There are several places to stay dotted around the Downtown Dubai district, including a trio of establishments tucked away in the “Old Town'' development, and the flagship Armani hotel in the Burj Khalifa itself, the world’s tallest building. The whole area of Sheikh Zayed Road and Downtown Dubai is an extraordinary sequence of neck-cricking high-rises which march south from the landmark Emirates Towers. This is the modern city at its most futuristic and flamboyant, and perhaps the defining example of Dubai’s insatiable desire to offer more luxury, more glitz and more retail opportunities than the competition, with a string of record-breaking attractions which now include not just the world’s highest building but also its largest mall, tallest hotel and biggest fountain.