Intercontinental Festival City Dubai Hotel Review

Introduction

We stayed here for 2 nights.  It sucked that our flight from Cape Town got in at 1AM, so really, we were in Dubai for ~36 hours.  I know everyone stays at the Park Hyatt, but we had 2 free annual night certificates from the Chase IHG card that we needed to use up.  Plus, I don’t think the redemption value at the PH is all that great anyway.

Getting to Hotel

The hotel is about 10 minutes away from the Dubai airport, and for some reason, it cost about $20 to get here.  When you take a taxi from the airport, they hit you with a minimum charge when you get in (maybe there’s a tax or toll we don’t know about.)  Anyway, that’s probably the best way to get to the hotel (maybe not the cheapest.)

Room

We were upgraded due to our lowly Platinum status with the IHG card.  Here are pictures of the room:

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Location

This wasn’t in the greatest location.  Sure, there is a crappy mall connected to it, aka the Festival City mall, which had an IKEA and an H&M, but you’d rather be at the other malls.  I think it’s about a 20 minute taxi ride to the Dubai Mall and the Burj al Arab.  We didn’t spent too much time in the room or hotel.

Perks

As a Platinum member, we did get 2 free drink tickets at the hotel bar, which we got 2 glasses of wine on our last night.

Conclusion

Would I stay here if I didn’t have the annual free nights?  NOPE!  Would I even use points here?  NOPE!  If I could do it again, I’d stay near the Dubai Mall instead since that’s where the Burj Khalifa is and closer proximity to the Burj al Arab.  The only great thing about this hotel is that it’s 10 minutes from the airport, which helped with our early morning flight.

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