A second W Escape hotel has opened in the Middle East. W Muscat, located in the Shatti Al Qurum neighborhood of Oman’s capital city Muscat, is a 279-room luxury beachfront hotel with 8,557 square feet of meeting space.
Guests are greeted by a 32-foot-tall steel statue of a frankincense tree by artist Pongsatat Uaiklang. In Omani culture, frankincense is a traditional welcome gift for travelers. The hotel’s unique design encompasses tilted ceiling panels that reference the area’s Bedouin tents, and asymmetric hallways inspired by the silhouette of the Al Hajar Mountains. Each guest room faces the Gulf of Oman and plays on the traditional shapes and colors of Oman, such as arched mirrors and lush pinks and blues. Other design elements, including beads and sails, are a nod to the area’s history of pearl fishing.
There are seven meeting rooms, the largest of which is the 13,500-square-foot Green Area 1 that can host a banquet for up to 650 guests and receptions for up to 810. There are currently four restaurants and lounges including the W brand Living Room lounge for small plates and cocktails; Harvest, featuring locally produced ingredients; Char, a reservation-only steak restaurant with an outdoor patio; and WET Deck, open for lunch and dinner next to the 19,000-square-foot beachfront pool. Two more eateries will open later this year: the Siddhartha Lounge by Buddha-bar and Ba Ban, a Chinese restaurant. Other amenities include a fitness center and a spa with 10 treatment rooms.
The hotel is 12 miles from Muscat International Airport and eight miles from the Muttrah Corniche, a historic area featuring mosques, fountains, and traditional latticed buildings fronting the Gulf of Oman.
