Star Boutique Hotel Apartment - Dubai, United Arab Emirates 

While the front desk may smile, they are greedy and absolutely useless. I stayed for a week, and purchased a $6 (one hour) internet card one evening, and it worked for two hours, and then stopped working. After 4 representatives, including the manager, they did not want to credit me for the $6 card. I was with a group of 20+ and we were spending 18thousand upward for our stay, and they refused to credit me for the smallest of items. But they did continue to smile through the whole process. The room cleaning was very bad. The room was never cleaned until about 4 or 5pm and always below standard. The location is crummy, far away from everything, and next to impossible to get a taxi. Stay away from this hotel if you can.

I stayed for just one night but would have happily stayed much longer. Check-in at 2:00am was fast and efficient and I found the staff to be very helpfut. The hotel is owned by the developer ETA Star, so if their hotel is indicative of the standard of their real estate developments, that bodes well for people buying apartments in Dubai. The hotel opened in May 2007. The room was very modern and tastefully done. It was a fully equipped studio with very high ceilings and probably the best bathroom I've had in a hotel ever. The kitchenette looked to be superbly equipped, although I didn't stay long enough to use the facilities. Toiletries in the bathroom were again excellent and more wide-ranging (disposable toothbrush etc) than any other hotel I've stayed in - and as we usually stay 4 or 5 star that's saying something. My room overlooked the construction site, but noise levels were minimal. What I really liked were blackout curtains behind the main curtains so I slept until late. Breakfast was only AED45 and again was a good spread in a tasteful restaurant. I thoroughly recommend this hotel.