Abu Dhabi Travel Guide 2026: Best Hotels, Restaurants & Things to Do
Abu Dhabi Travel Guide
Abu Dhabi is what happens when a city looks at Dubai, considers the whole business of being Dubai, and quietly decides it would rather wear a better suit.
There are skyscrapers, naturally. There are enormous hotels, beaches, shopping malls and enough marble to make Michelangelo feel slightly underdressed. There are also supercars, sunshine, extraordinary restaurants and the sort of hospitality where somebody will happily bring you an iced towel simply because you look as though you might benefit from one.
But Abu Dhabi is different.
It feels calmer than Dubai. More considered. Less desperate to prove that it has money, presumably because it has already checked the bank balance.
The city sits on a series of islands and peninsulas, with the Corniche stretching along the waterfront and Saadiyat Island providing some of the city’s best beaches, hotels and cultural attractions. Yas Island, meanwhile, is where you go when you’ve decided that relaxing on a sun lounger has become terribly dull and you’d rather throw yourself around a theme park at considerable speed.
I’ve visited Abu Dhabi to stay, eat, drink and, occasionally, make decisions about aircraft seats that I would later regret.
So this is my guide to Abu Dhabi — the places I’ve actually experienced, rather than a list assembled from TripAdvisor and a man called Dave’s Facebook post from 2018.
The Best Hotels in Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi does hotels rather well.
Actually, that’s underselling it.
This is a city where the phrase five-star hotel can mean anything from a very good room with a nice swimming pool to an enormous palace where you begin to suspect the building itself has a larger annual budget than some small countries.
Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental
If you want to understand Abu Dhabi’s approach to luxury, start here.
The Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental review was one of those occasions where the hotel makes you question whether you’ve accidentally wandered into someone else’s life.
It is enormous, unapologetically luxurious and gloriously over the top. The service is exceptional, the facilities are vast and the attention to detail is exactly what you’d hope for from a hotel of this calibre.
There are pools, beaches, restaurants, activities and enough marble to tile several medium-sized airports.
The Travel Critic verdict: 5★
Best for: Luxury, families, couples and anyone who thinks a normal hotel is looking a little bit underfunded.
More Abu Dhabi Hotel Reviews
Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi
Another Abu Dhabi hotel I’ve reviewed, and one worth considering if you’re looking for something more relaxed than the grand-palace approach.
Best for: Beach, relaxation and a more understated luxury experience.
Read the full review: Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi
The Best Restaurants in Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi’s restaurant scene has become seriously good.
There’s a tendency with Gulf cities to assume that expensive restaurants are automatically good restaurants. They aren’t. You can spend an extraordinary amount of money on a meal and still leave wondering whether you’ve been mugged in a particularly attractive dining room.
Fortunately, there are some genuinely excellent places here.
TOTÓ Abu Dhabi
Celebrity restaurants have had a bit of a rough ride over the years.
Once upon a time, getting a famous person to put their name above a restaurant was apparently enough. Thankfully, we’ve moved on from the era of restaurants being decorated with pictures of celebrities who looked as though they had never actually eaten there.
TOTÓ is different.
As I found in my TOTÓ Abu Dhabi review, the Italian food is genuinely impressive, the surroundings are glamorous without becoming ridiculous and the atmosphere manages to feel special without being stuffy.
And yes, Rafael Nadal and Cristiano Ronaldo are involved.
Although sadly neither has ever challenged me to a game of tennis.
The Travel Critic verdict: 5★
Best for: A special dinner, Italian food and a little celebrity glamour.
NIRI Abu Dhabi
Japanese restaurants are everywhere these days, which makes standing out rather difficult.
NIRI manages it.
My NIRI Abu Dhabi review found a restaurant with energy, good cocktails, confident food and the sort of atmosphere that tells you you’re somewhere people actually want to be.
The soft-shell crab was a particular highlight.
And the fact that the restaurant was full in a city with approximately seventeen billion restaurants is probably worth mentioning.
The Travel Critic verdict: 5★
Best for: Japanese food, cocktails and a lively evening.
Martabaan by Hemant Oberoi
This one didn’t go quite so well.
The Martabaan review is a useful reminder that impressive credentials don’t automatically produce an impressive restaurant.
Hemant Oberoi is culinary royalty. Unfortunately, the restaurant itself didn’t quite live up to the billing.
The lighting was brutal, portions were disappointing and the service disappeared when it was needed most.
The Travel Critic verdict: 3★
Best for: Perhaps the sort of person who enjoys being able to say they’ve eaten somewhere impressive more than actually enjoying the meal.
Raclette Abu Dhabi
I love cheese.
This is therefore not a sentence I write lightly.
The Raclette Abu Dhabi review was not exactly a love letter.
The concept is fun. Melted cheese is, after all, one of civilisation’s great achievements. But the service was far too fast, the menu was frustrating and the whole experience felt confused.
The Travel Critic verdict: 2★
Best for: People experiencing an overwhelming and entirely understandable craving for melted cheese.
The Best Bars in Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi isn’t necessarily the first place you think of for nightlife, but there are plenty of places to drink well.
I’ve also reviewed some of them, including Black Tap Abu Dhabi, where the burgers and cocktails make a fairly compelling argument that opulence doesn’t necessarily require caviar.
Black Tap Abu Dhabi
Burgers, cocktails and enough cheese to make a cardiologist quietly leave the room.
Read the full review: Black Tap Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi’s Best Experiences & Things to Do
The great thing about Abu Dhabi is that you don’t have to spend the entire trip inside your hotel.
Although, frankly, some of the hotels make a very good argument for doing exactly that.
Saadiyat Island
If you’re looking for beaches and high-end resorts, Saadiyat is one of the best areas to base yourself.
The beaches are beautiful, the hotels are excellent and the atmosphere is noticeably more relaxed than the centre of Abu Dhabi.
The Corniche
The Corniche is Abu Dhabi’s great waterfront stretch, with beaches, walking paths, gardens and spectacular views across the Gulf.
It’s particularly good around sunset, when the temperature becomes vaguely compatible with human life.
Yas Island
Yas Island is where Abu Dhabi turns the volume up.
Theme parks, attractions, restaurants and entertainment make it particularly appealing for families.
And if you have children, this is probably the bit where you stop pretending you’re going to spend the entire holiday reading a book beside an infinity pool.
Louvre Abu Dhabi
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is one of the city’s cultural highlights and an excellent counterbalance to all the hotels, malls and enormous things.
The architecture alone is worth seeing.
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque
One of Abu Dhabi’s defining sights and arguably one of the most spectacular buildings in the UAE.
Go with time to actually take it in rather than treating it as another box to tick before heading back to the hotel pool.
Where Should You Stay in Abu Dhabi?
This is where I’d make the guide particularly useful for search.
Best area for luxury: Saadiyat Island
For beautiful beaches, spectacular hotels and a more relaxed holiday, Saadiyat is hard to beat.
Best area for families: Yas Island
If theme parks and attractions are high on the agenda, Yas Island makes life considerably easier.
Best for first-time visitors: Abu Dhabi Corniche
The Corniche gives you easy access to the city, waterfront and many of the major sights.
Best for a romantic escape: Saadiyat Island
Beach, sunsets, beautiful hotels and fewer opportunities for somebody to ask you whether you’d like to go on a rollercoaster.
Is Abu Dhabi Worth Visiting?
Yes.
And increasingly, I’d argue it deserves to be considered on its own rather than simply as the quieter neighbour to Dubai.
Dubai is the extrovert. Abu Dhabi is the chap standing next to him at the party who has considerably more money but doesn’t feel the need to tell you about it.
It’s sophisticated, extraordinarily comfortable, increasingly interesting culturally and blessed with some genuinely exceptional hotels and restaurants.
There are things I don’t love. Not every restaurant is brilliant. Some places lean rather heavily on grandeur. And if you’re looking for gritty authenticity, you may occasionally feel that someone has taken reality, polished it, put it in a five-star lobby and charged AED 85 for a cocktail.
But when Abu Dhabi gets it right, it gets it very right.
Abu Dhabi Reviews by The Travel Critic
Hotels
- Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Restaurants
- TOTÓ Abu Dhabi — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- NIRI Abu Dhabi — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Martabaan by Hemant Oberoi — ⭐⭐⭐
- Raclette Abu Dhabi — ⭐⭐
Bars & Other Reviews
- Black Tap Abu Dhabi
- Etihad — Not all seats are equal. Especially on Etihad.
The Travel Critic’s Abu Dhabi Verdict
Come for the hotels. Stay for the food. Come back because you’ve discovered that Abu Dhabi is considerably more interesting than you expected.
And if you do come, book somewhere good.
Life is too short for a bad hotel.