One&Only Royal Mirage

One&Only Royal Mirage is a resort in three parts, and choosing between them is most of the booking. The Palace is the largest. Arabian Court has the family pool. The Residence & Spa takes only over-12s and keeps an adults-only pool of its own, with palms down one side and the Gulf on the other. The resort opened in 1999, and the three share 65 acres of garden, lawns and courtyards set with fountains and sculpture, under domes and towers in the Arabian manner. The rooms keep to the same idea at closer range: in those facing the sea, carved archways, handcrafted wooden furniture and mosaics, with marble and silverwork in the bathrooms, and in the Residence, majlis-style seating and balconies over the water.

Recommended for families who want a long beach and some architecture in the same place, and for couples happy to keep to the grown-up corner of a big resort. The sand is private and runs for a kilometre, and Drift, the beach club, rings its infinity pool with white loungers and cabanas. Children from four have KidsOnly, whose activities are held at Al Koufa Fort, a building any four-year-old would have chosen, and babysitting can be arranged on request. For anyone with energy left there are tennis and padel courts and a watersports centre. Dinner is a choice of nine restaurants, cooking from Argentina and India to Morocco and the Mediterranean, Trèsind and Tagine among them. And the spa keeps an Oriental hammam, where all that Arabian architecture is finally put to work.