ME Dubai by Meliá – Zaha Hadid’s futuristic Opus hotel

Dubai has plenty of hotels chasing “futuristic,” but most of them are just tall and shiny. ME Dubai by Meliá is something else – it’s built inside The Opus, a building with a literal void carved through its center, designed top to bottom by Zaha Hadid before her death, right down to the furniture. This was her first hotel, and the fluid, curved language she’s known for runs through every corridor, every restaurant and every suite rather than stopping at the lobby.

Here’s what’s actually inside – the Studio ME+ Suite with Burj Khalifa views, the floor-by-floor layout of restaurants and amenities, dinner at ROKA, and what a stay actually costs.

So what actually is this place?

ME Dubai by Meliá opened on March 1, 2020, occupying part of The Opus, a mixed-use tower in Business Bay developed by Omniyat and completed in 2020 at a cost of roughly $700 million (2.5 billion AED). The building is Zaha Hadid’s only hotel project and one of her final designs, defined by its cube-shaped structure with a fluid, molten-looking void cut through the middle – visible from across Business Bay and lit up at night as one of the district’s most recognizable silhouettes.

• 🏗️ Housed inside The Opus, designed entirely by Zaha Hadid – architecture, interiors and furnishings
• 🛏️ 93 guest rooms and suites, each themed either cosmopolitan-nightlife or desert-inspired
• 🍽️ 7 restaurants and bars on-property, including a signature ROKA
• 🏙️ Located in Business Bay, roughly 2.5 km from Downtown Dubai and 15 km from the airport
• 🧖 Dedicated spa, heated pool, outdoor pool and a 260 sqm boutique gym
• 🐕 A genuinely rare pet-friendly program with no weight limit for dogs

The Studio ME+ Suite with Burj Khalifa View

At 84 square meters, this suite is one of ME Dubai’s ME+ category rooms, decorated in the hotel’s signature midnight blue with a desert-inspired alternate theme, and built around the same idea running through the whole property – that small details matter as much as the overall shape of the room. The king-size bed, sofa area and bathroom with a rain shower and Jacuzzi are all laid out to keep sightlines toward the windows, where the suite delivers a direct view of the Burj Khalifa rising over Business Bay. It’s the kind of room that photographs well precisely because Hadid’s design team clearly thought about how light moves through the space across the day, not just how it looks in a single shot.

Floor by floor

ME Dubai spreads its restaurants, wellness facilities and public spaces across several distinct floors rather than clustering everything around a single lobby, which makes exploring the property feel closer to moving through a small vertical district than a conventional hotel layout.

🛎️ Ground floor

The entrance and main lobby sit here, along with one of the property’s restaurants, a lounge area and a beauty salon – the first real look at how far Hadid’s curved, sculptural design language extends into functional spaces most hotels treat as an afterthought.

🏊 1st floor

Home to the pool, gym and a cluster of restaurants – this is the floor built for daytime use, whether that’s a swim, a workout in the 260 sqm boutique gym, or a casual meal between activities.

🍴 2nd floor

The main all-day dining venue is here, handling breakfast and the more casual meal service outside of the property’s signature restaurants.

🎨 3rd floor

A dedicated art space – part of ME Dubai’s broader positioning around art and culture rather than pure luxury amenities, and a genuinely unusual inclusion for a hotel floor plan at this scale.

🧖 4th floor

The spa occupies its own floor, offering stimulating massages, exclusive treatments and private showers with changing rooms – a proper wellness floor rather than a single treatment room tucked near the gym.

Nightly rates

The Studio ME+ Suite with Burj Khalifa View runs around 3,210 AED (about $874 USD) for two nights, putting it at roughly $437 per night for this particular category. Rates at ME Dubai move with season and room category, with the larger Ultimate and Beyond ME+ suites priced considerably higher given their size and additional Jacuzzi and lounge inclusions.

Dining across the property

ME Dubai runs seven distinct restaurants and bars, which is an unusually deep lineup for a 93-room hotel.

🍢 ROKA

The signature restaurant, built around a central robata grill – the same style of coal-fired cooking originally used by fishermen in Japan’s northern seas to prepare their catch on board. It’s a communal, high-energy dining experience and the standout dinner reservation on-property.

🥩 The MAINE Land Brasserie

An old-world steakhouse feel with a modern edge, running everything from shellfish and snails to bespoke steak cuts, including some dishes carried over from the original MAINE restaurant in JBR alongside new additions.

🍸 Salmon Guru

Less a conventional cocktail bar and more an experimental mixology space, built around unusual flavor combinations rather than a standard drinks menu.

🌿 Sfumato

Led by Michelin-recognized chef Alena Solodovichenko from Moscow, Sfumato transforms local vegetables and roots into the centerpiece of the menu rather than treating them as sides – a genuinely different approach to fine dining in Dubai.

☕ Sfumato Coffee Point

A dedicated coffee and pastry spot with the same Zaha Hadid design treatment as the rest of the hotel, sourcing roasted beans from top coffee-growing regions.

🍳 Central Cosmo Tapas & Bar

Traditional Spanish tapas with a modern twist, serving as the hotel’s breakfast venue among other things – a fitting choice given Meliá’s Spanish roots.

🥖 Le Relais de L’Entrecôte

A Parisian-style bistro built around one dish – sirloin steak with a secret sauce and a simple green salad – delivered with the kind of consistency that’s made the format a global institution.

What else there is to do

• Rooftop-style pool with skyline views over Dubai’s downtown core
• 260 sqm boutique gym with modern equipment and supervised personal training
• Spa treatments across a dedicated fourth-floor wellness space
• Dedicated art space on the third floor
• Kids club for family stays
• Bali Bed cabana rentals for a more private poolside experience
• Complimentary private airport transfers to and from DXB, subject to hotel conditions

Getting there

ME Dubai sits in Business Bay, roughly 2.5 km from Downtown Dubai and about 15 km from Dubai International Airport (DXB) – a straightforward 15-20 minute drive depending on traffic. The hotel offers complimentary private vehicle transfers to and from the airport, worth confirming times and conditions with the hotel directly ahead of arrival.

Best time to visit: November through March brings Dubai’s most comfortable outdoor temperatures, which matters more here than at a beach resort given the rooftop pool and skyline views are a genuine draw. Summer months (June-September) bring steep rate drops citywide, and since much of the ME Dubai experience – the restaurants, the spa, the art floor – happens indoors, it remains a reasonable option even outside the cooler season.

Frequently asked questions

📹 Video by ST Travel