Atlantis The Palm

Few hotels anywhere have committed to family spectacle on the scale of Atlantis The Palm. Crowning the apex of Dubai's Palm Jumeirah, the coral-pink colossus is less a hotel with facilities than a self-contained resort city: Aquaventure's record-breaking slides and river rides, the Lost Chambers aquarium with its 65,000 marine animals, a kilometre of private beach, dolphin and sea-lion encounters, and a celebrity-chef restaurant row that runs from Nobu to Ossiano's underwater dining room.

Rooms and suites lean into the ocean myth without tipping into theme-park kitsch — the best of them, the Underwater Suites, stare straight into the Ambassador Lagoon from floor-to-ceiling acrylic walls three floors below the lobby. Families are the resort's centre of gravity: the Atlantis Explorers kids club runs all day, teens get their own zone, and the sheer scale means a full week fills itself without leaving the property.

It is enormous, it is busy, and it is unapologetically loud in high season — but for children it is, quite simply, the most exciting hotel on earth, and the reason so many Dubai family holidays begin and end here.