Atana Hotel – Dubai, UAE

Location

Located in Al Barsha South (Teacom) This hotel is near the business district with a short taxi ride from Mall of the Emirates shopping mall. Dubai airport is around 16 miles away. Most attractions, including the beach are taxi rides away. Although easily accessible from the hotel entrance, the cost of these can soon add up. There is a daily shuttle service to some destinations like the beach and selected shopping malls but these are not too frequent so best to check with the concierge and plan accordingly. No sign up required, just wait outside at the designated times and jump on!

There are a handful of small restaurants nearby if you like to walk around and find them. Nothing stood out to us. Just the usual “I’m hungry so need to eat” sort of places.

Amenities

This hotel offers all the usual amenities you would expect from a 4* hotel. Usual outdoor pool, gym, baby/child sitting (at a cost) and wifi throughout the hotel.

Atana offers guests a Full board Dining option but we would advise not to choose this if you are a foodie. The selection was sub-par in our view and the food came out lukewarm on most occasions. The dining options are what you would expect on an average 3* hotel. Disappointment all round really.

The rooms are spacious and probably the highlight of the hotel. The hotel is split between what seems like two towers. If you are booking more than one room for your party, ensure you check with the hotel first to check you are all able to stay in the same tower.  Unfortunately we didn’t know about this so had to treck across buildings (from the inside) to see each other.

Value For Money

Price wise, the hotel does offer value. The cost is quite cheap but the package with full board which we chose was not worth it.  There are better hotels for the money in Dubai. If you are going for a tourist vacation, choose another hotel with a better location (like on JBR, The Palm etc) If you are looking for Culture, choose a hotel in Daira or Bur-Dubai as these have their own little gems.

Service / Staff

The service we received was OK. Nothing special to shout out about. The staff at front desk seemed too busy to answer queries and made checking in/out mistakes that shouldn’t happen. We waited for an hour checking out due to a billing issue where we were overcharged. This was sorted out in the end but it took some heated exchanges to get the job done. Checking in was the same and took far to long.

The staff at the restaurant seemed to be unaware of the guests and asked for room ID EVERYTIME we went for our meal. There were around 10 of us from two families so for a 10 day holiday, at some point they should of remembered us to be full board. This was the same for all 3 meals of the day. Poor service.

Lastly – Would we go back

No. Mostly due to the poor service we received coupled with the sub-par food on the full board option. The location is not brilliant and there are far better hotels available to stay at in Dubai.