One of the fastest-growing hotel groups right now is Banyan Tree, the luxury Thai company that has recently opened in places as far-flung as Corfu and Puebla. The hotels are very Eastern hospitality meets wherever you are. That means Banyan Tree Doha, the latest selection for Room Key, our series on exciting new hotels, is a flashy lux tower you’d expect to find in this city of black gold but coupled with a next level wellness spa.
The flash begins from the outside. On the boulevard passing the hotel you can look up and see giant niches in its facade where full-grown trees are housed. Walking inside to the lobby is a snap in the face with giant metallic blob sculptures that reflect the big screen flames dancing along the walls and a haunting metallic forest canopy above. The hotel’s decor is the vision of the French interior designer Jacques Garcia, known for his flamboyant design in works like Paris’ chi-chi Hotel Costes.
Here is no exception. The hotel’s suites range from 645 square feet to 1,700 square feet with sitting rooms featuring velvet couches in shades ranging from moss green to burnt orange. The furnishing colors match the velvet wall behind each hazelnut leather headboard in the bedroom. Lantern pendants on either side of the bed hang from a chain attached to the ceiling. Behind one of the heaviest bathroom doors you will ever push or pull (a blessing for sound) is an actual bath room. Ours had a Taft-sized tub and then two “curtains” of striped mirrors surrounding the shower and then the toilet.
Breakfast is a buffet spread at the upper level Italian restaurant Il Galante, and it’s a great spot to take in the warren-like city of midsize taupe buildings stretching out into the desert on one side and then the skyrocketing towers of the West Bay on the other. The hotel’s signature restaurant is on brand—a high end Thai restaurant called Saffron where you should gorge on its apps (the spicy grilled duck salad is to die for) and a pad thai the chef rightly claimed would be different (How? It just was) from any I’d had. On the 28th floor one can hang out at the Vertigo Doha lounge with 360-degree views of the city.
As a Banyan Tree, the hotel is heavily focused on the wellness aspect, so the annex connecting it to the surrounding residences and mall contains a black and white cathedral with columns resembling alabaster for its pool and jacuzzis. There’s also a gym with equipment that looks so expensive you’d be afraid to drop the weights.
But the most spectacular thing about the hotel is its soon-to-open spa. The treatment rooms are an unmooring combo of futurist and organic design you imagine existing a century from now on a colony cut into a mountain on Mars. Most unusual are the curvy sauna chambers that might leave you wondering how gauche it would be to ask for dimensions to see if they would fit in your own home.
Surrounding the hotel is a circular complex that houses residences operated by the hotel as well as a movie theater and the underground Quest theme park with the world’s largest indoor roller coaster and highest tower drop.
For tourists focused more on culture than on the sort of Middle East resort set up at hotels in the West Bay and Lusail, the real appeal is the hotel’s location. The Banyan Tree is within walking distance (or quick drive or metro) to the National Museum, Souq Waqif, Mushaireb’s house museums, and the Museum of Islamic Art.
