Starry starry night... but someone please switch off the lights

THE Burj Azizi is everywhere these days touting itself as the world’s second-tallest building. Having missed top spot – something that clearly rankles – the Dubai development boasts of a seven-star hotel with the “highest lobby and highest occupied hotel room”, to excite would-be visitors. Is there a subtle difference between an occupied or empty room?

This is all quite a stretch, even in our hyperbolic times. With current hotel star ratings running from one to five, seven stars smacks of ghastly excess. This may excite a few, who will then have to stop their ears from popping as they wait patiently and swop lifts to lumber up to some Valhalla-scraping floor, only to recall they left something important downstairs.

Vertiginous sky lobbies offer a grand entrance for some, while irritating others who may prefer a more immediate, unfussy street-front welcome. After check-in at a sky lobby to admire the vistas, guests are banished to the bowels of the building with another long ride in the lift to a low-floor room with neither views not light. This switcheroo is now baked into contemporary hotel design.