It sounds a silly thing but a pool makes all the difference – CAPELLA SYDNEY, opening 15th March, has a 20-metre pool, an indication that all savvy developers should definitely think pools. Think the great USA. MANDARIN ORIENTAL NEW YORK and FOUR SEASONS MIAMI spring to mind, the first inside, the latter outside. Want a rooftop pool? Ah, here we have THE PENINSULA NEW YORK and, across the ‘pond’ in London, CARLTON TOWER JUMEIRAH, and, opening before the end of the year, ARTYZEN SINGAPORE. Opening soon, too, is Nikken Sekkei-designed ONE&ONLY ONE ZA’ABEEL, which will have a rooftop pool atop the 100m-long restaurant-filled bridge, The Link, joining the building’s two towers.
London can also proffer one of the most romantic below-ground pools, at BVLGARI HOTEL LONDON, although it faces competition from CLARIDGE’S new pool in its recently-opened not-inexpensive five floor subterranean extension. Interestingly, using the same brilliant Irish diggers, Prime Capital also excavated under Admiralty Arch, part of the intended Waldorf Astoria, but then Prime Capital, fronted by Rafael Sorrano, ran out of money and no-one seems to know what current owners, the Reuben Brothers, are going to do.
And then we have ‘lots of pools in one building’. Here it is essential to mention Dubai’s new ATLANTIS ROYAL DUBAI, which has 90 pools for 795 keys. Girlahead actually rather likes Dubai’s ANANTARA PALM JUMEIRAH because its villas have ‘attached’, swim straight into, pools. Ground floor rooms at KEMPINSKI BANGKOK lead, down three steps, straight into the hotel’s internal pool network, as do some ground floor rooms at AL BUSTAN RITZ-CARLTON MUSCAT.
The 20th floor Presidential Suite at HOTEL ECLAT BEIJING has, in its 780sq m space, a private pool, an Armani show kitchen and a Dali or two. All 38 villas at ONE&ONLY WOLGAN VALLEY, in Australia’s Blue Mountains, have integral seven-metre pools. But you know what, nothing beats a truly truly private pool, as at FOUR SEASONS BALI JIMBARAN BAY – or SIX SENSES in Israel (above) or Oman, or THE BRANDO in French Polynesia
