Pullman Dubai Downtown Review: Deluxe Suite & Executive Suite in Dubai, UAE

Pullman Dubai Downtown Review: Deluxe Suite & Executive Suite in Dubai, UAE

Somehow this trip turned into a 9-night, 11-day itinerary
for Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE!
It was basically honeymoon-level intense

and the very first hotel we stayed at was
Pullman Dubai Downtown.

There were barely any detailed reviews from Korean travelers, so I figured I should write one properly.

I renew Accor Plus every year,
and I’m also working on my Accor status,
so whenever possible, I usually choose an Accor brand hotel.

What I didn’t realize when I booked, though,
was that in the Middle East, unfortunately, Accor Plus
dining discounts don’t apply. ^_^

In terms of location, Pullman Dubai Downtown
is close to Burj Khalifa and Dubai Mall,
in the Downtown area,right in front of the Dubai Water Canal,
so it’s honestly not a bad location for sightseeing.

That said, I seriously underestimated the Downtown Dubai scene,
and the traffic was even more chaotic than I expected.
It was noisy too, so there were definitely a few issues.

But to be fair, that wasn’t just a Pullman problem—
it felt like a Downtown Dubai problem in general. ^_^

Anyway, let’s get into the hotel review.

First, this is what the view in front of the hotel looks like.
Wow.

In the Downtown area,
you can see Burj Khalifa from a lot of places,
but the difference seems to be whether you get the full tower
or a partially blocked, cut-off view of the top.

Anyway, this is what the Pullman entrance looks like,
and if you’re driving,
you really need to pay attention to the entrance road.

It’s weirdly hard to explain,
but the roads in Downtown Dubai are kind of unusual.
When you’re trying to get to a specific building,
you often can’t just turn directly in from the main road.
You have to enter from a separate smaller access road beforehand.

No idea what I mean?
Just trust your navigation app and listen carefully. _

Even when our hotel was still only about 100 meters away,
yes, we already had to turn in at that point.
Ah—and if you see Blue Bay Tower, that’s your cue to enter.

Guest valet parking is free,
but we like to move fast,
so we parked ourselves in the B2 guest parking garage.

If you use valet, getting your car back can take a while.
People here are not exactly as fast-paced as they are in Korea. ^_^

If you’re facing the building, the basement parking entrance is on the left,
but again, you can’t just drive straight in.
A staff member has to lift the barrier for you.

Sometimes they opened it automatically,
but occasionally they checked our key card to confirm we were guests.

It is a five-star hotel,
and within the Accor brand lineup,
Pullman sits somewhere in the upper-mid range.

On the first day, I was way too excited about Burj Khalifa,
so every time I saw it, I took another photo.

The hotel lobby!
The staff were definitely kind,
but honestly, they weren’t great at actually handling things… sigh.

My husband had already checked us in earlier in the day,
so when I arrived at night, I went straight up to the room.

The lobby had high ceilings and felt grand,
but it didn’t really feel especially luxurious to me.

If you look on Instagram, this is that spot
where girls sit on the little sofa and take all their glam photos.

On the first floor, there’s COULEY, the breakfast restaurant,
and Brothaus, the bakery café.

There was also a meeting table off to one side of the lobby,
but it was so exposed that I honestly wondered who would use it.

There was even a shop selling vintage watches,
and since the door was closed,
I just peeked through the glass—lots of expensive, rare old pieces inside.

Here’s a quick look around the lobby area in video form.

Even the second-floor restroom off the lobby was just… clean and fine.

Pullman Dubai Downtown floor guide:
guest rooms run from the 5th to the 19th floor, and we were assigned the 16th.

One thing I never got used to was the smell
in the elevator area and hallways—
this unusual Arab spice-like scent stayed with us the entire time. ;;

Starting with the wooden key card,
the hotel definitely gives off an eco-conscious vibe in little ways throughout.

We picked a suite instead of a standard room
because we wanted lounge access,
and there are actually five different suite types.

We had booked a Superior Suite,
but at check-in, they upgraded us to a Deluxe Suite.

I was still only lowly Silver status at the time,
but even that was way better than having no status at all—especially abroad.

Our first assigned room was Room 1623.
On the room layout map, only half of it was marked in red.

I’m pretty sensitive to noise, so from the time I booked,
I had left a note asking for a quiet room.
I’m guessing that’s why they gave us an end room.

But what’s the point of an end room
if the guests across the hall are drunk,
shirtless, opening their door, and yelling in the hallway?
My husband went out once and told them to quiet down,
and when it happened again the next day, we called the front desk
and asked them to deal with it.

Anyway, when you first walk in, there’s a short hallway area
and a small powder room with just a toilet and sink.

What annoyed me again here was that
this small bathroom clearly hadn’t been cleaned properly. ^^;

Past the hallway, you get the living room,
with the minibar and TV across from the sofa.

We had taken out the minibar items
and put our own drinks in there, so it looks a little messy in the photo.

Anyway, the minibar drinks, wine, and snacks all cost extra.

The third major frustration point was the fridge.
It had basically no cooling at all, so they sent an engineer up
and replaced the entire unit once.

Then we put our drinks back in,
and when I checked again much later,
it was exactly the same—basically not a fridge, just a drawer.

At that point I kind of gave up and decided to leave it alone.

Next up, the bedroom, separated from the living room.
The bed was big, comfortable, and nice.

The lighting layout was decent, and there were plenty of outlets too.
The room itself wasn’t bad at all—the problem was the details.

There was also a TV in the bedroom, and the picture quality was terrible.
Was this really a 2023 TV?
I checked the brand and it was Philips,
but people’s faces looked so blurry it was almost ridiculous.

I could have lived with low resolution,
but while I was catching up on I Am Solo,
everyone’s faces looked weirdly yellow and washed out.

Do I sound like too much of a complainer?
Anyway.

One thing I noticed in Dubai and Abu Dhabi hotels
is that a lot of them provide water in glass bottles like this.

I’m guessing it’s part of a plastic reduction effort.
If you damage the glass bottle, I think there’s a 20-dirham charge.

Very Middle East-style, there was also a handheld bidet next to the toilet.

After using the toilet,
you shift over and rinse with water from the sprayer.
There was soap right next to it too.

They had pretty much all the usual disposable amenities,
including a toothbrush with a wooden handle,
and even the toothpaste came in a paper tube.

I liked that there was both a shower stall and a separate bathtub.
The bathroom opens right up toward the bedroom,

but there is a blind you can lower.
I didn’t really want my clothes on full display,

so I blurred things out in the photo.

There were enough hangers, and there was also an iron and ironing board.
On the first night, after a long flight and a late arrival,

we just ordered Chinese food nearby.
It wasn’t amazing, but the portions were huge, so we ended up eating a lot anyway.

This was roughly the view from the room.
To the left was an empty lot, and to the right we could see the canal
and the pool of the hotel next door.

But Pullman Dubai Downtown
does also have Burj Khalifa view rooms.
When you book, that view category is offered as a separate room option.

Personally, though, since you see Burj Khalifa constantly around the city,
I wasn’t sure I needed to see it from my room too.

That said, the outdoor pool next door
looked a little short on sunbeds, no?

That wraps up the room tour, and we stayed in this room for two nights.
But beyond all the issues I already mentioned,
the biggest problem was the late-night street racing noise.

Not motorcycles—supercars.
Exhaust blasts, popping sounds… a whole different level.

You can kind of tell from the room view photo above,
but the road right in front of the hotel
seemed to be a favorite route for nighttime racers.

Even if you’re not especially sensitive to noise,
could you really sleep
with something that sounded like the Yeouido Fireworks Festival outside? It was almost that bad.

Of course, the road noise itself
isn’t exactly the hotel’s fault,

but from the time I booked and throughout the stay, because of the room across from us and everything else,
I kept emphasizing that I’m sensitive to noise.

In the end, I just couldn’t stay in that room any longer,
so even though we had booked a longer stay,
we were ready to cancel everything and move to another hotel.

But after hearing the situation, the manager
came out personally and asked us to give them one more chance.
She said she would move us to a truly quiet room. ;;

I was already pretty upset with Pullman at that point
and was ready to leave, but she was so sincerely kind and apologetic
and offered us a better room, so it felt awkward to refuse.

We decided to try sleeping in the new room for one night first.

And that’s how we ended up moving to
the Executive Suite, the hotel’s second-best room category.

Since there’s only one Presidential Suite,
this was basically the best room in the hotel in practical terms.

It was the kind of room where even filming one full walkthrough took a while.

To make the move easier, they kept us on the same floor and moved us to Room 1611.

Manager Kaia personally showed us the room,
and told us this room had never once received a noise complaint, asking us to trust her.

Time for another room tour.
Again, it starts with a small entry hallway,

then a central living room,
with the bedroom behind the wall on the left and the kitchen area behind the wall on the right.

At 93 square meters, this room was huge.

From the living room windows, the canal view was wide open and beautiful.
The living room had a TV and minibar just like before,

but what shocked me was that this room had an LG TV.
I mean, we weren’t in a standard room—
we had booked a suite,
so shouldn’t the TVs at least be consistently LG-level across the board?

There was even a PlayStation.
We were too busy going out sightseeing
to spend time using it, though.

Maybe I should have turned it on at least once.

This was the dining area, but the sunlight was so strong
that it looked dark in the backlit photo.

This is what it looked like more clearly in person.
We barely used this space, though, which felt like a waste.

There was also a sink,
and the fridge was a full-size home-style refrigerator.
The brand was Samsung. ^^

After dealing with that useless mini fridge,
this one felt amazing.

That said, refrigerators in this region in general
don’t seem to get as aggressively cold as they do in Korea.

There was also a small extra bathroom by the kitchen,
and oddly, the hair dryer wasn’t in the bedroom—
it was only here, which was annoying when getting ready in the morning.

Still, having this extra bathroom
did help my husband and me keep a little privacy.

The bedroom looked like this.
Compared with the Deluxe Suite, the headboard and decor
felt a little more polished and upscale.

After sleeping here for a few days, I can honestly say
it was incredibly quiet.
Since it faced the canal instead of the road,
there was no way for traffic noise to reach us the same way.

If you book Pullman Dubai Downtown,
absolutely request a canal view room!!!!

Next to the bedroom was a large bathroom,
and if you look all the way to the left in the photo,
you can spot a narrow but deep dressing room.

There was also a luggage rack,
way more hangers than before,
and all the usual things like a safe, iron, and so on.

My husband always has to squeeze in some work wherever we go,
so a desk matters to him, and this one was a little narrow.

Interestingly, there was an iMac,
which we didn’t use, but the printer actually came in handy.

Watching him work there made him look like a rich Middle Eastern businessman.

Let’s finish up with the bathroom.
The double sinks were convenient and nice.

The bathtub was large and perfectly fine too,
but the handheld shower area
and the water control lever were placed way too far apart,
and I genuinely don’t understand why they designed it that way.

There was also a scale, which I did my best to ignore.

The amenities here were refillable,
and the brand was C.O. Bigelow, which I hadn’t tried before.
The scent was nice, but the shampoo left my hair a little stiff.

My husband had brought along Dubai’s so-called it-item cactus shampoo,
so I just used the Vatika cactus shampoo instead.

This bathroom had a bidet too.
There was a green light under the toilet,
which actually made it easy to find at night.

Working on my laptop with the canal view before checkout.jpg

Anyway,
thanks to Manager Kaia, we ended up having a really nice stay in a much better room.
That said, after living in it for a bit, I realized a room that big can also be inconvenient. ^_^

If you’re staying for months, sure, bigger is better,
but there was quite a bit of dead space,
so moving around the room felt a little inefficient.

If I stay here again next time,
I think the first room—the Deluxe Suite—would actually be enough for me.

On checkout day, in the lobby,
I ran into Manager Kaia again,
and she asked one more time whether our stay had been comfortable.
She thanked us warmly and said goodbye,
so we ended up leaving on a good note.

I just realized this review has gone way over 3,000 characters.

Next time, I’ll come back with a post on the club lounge, breakfast, and hotel facilities
at Pullman Dubai Downtown. Please stay tuned. ^^