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The record
377.1 m1,237.2 ft
Ciel Tower
United Arab Emirates
The record
The tallest hotel in the world is Ciel Tower, in the United Arab Emirates — 377.1 m (1,237.2 ft), height.
Source: Wikipedia List of tallest hotels / CNN. Verified .
The world's highest hotel rooms are not in the world's tallest hotel. Mecca's Makkah Clock Royal Tower rises 601 metres with a 1,618-room Fairmont inside it, and Shanghai Tower's J Hotel occupies floors most buildings never reach — but neither is a hotel, exactly.
Both are mixed-use towers that happen to contain one. This list counts something narrower: buildings measured to their architectural top that are given over almost entirely to a hotel, at least 80 per cent of their floors, and that are open to guests today.
That rules out Dubai's Marina 101, taller than everything here but mostly apartments, and Taipei's Sky Tower, which would rank eleventh if it were finished. What survives runs from 226 metres to 377 metres across seven countries and three continents — and Dubai holds more than half of it.
Every world’s-tallest-hotel record holder since 1986 is on this list — the title has passed from Singapore to Bangkok, and then to Dubai four separate times.
The world’s highest hotel rooms are not in the world’s tallest hotel — Mecca’s Makkah Clock Royal Tower and Shanghai Tower both put guests far higher off the ground, but each is a mixed-use skyscraper, so they belong among the tallest buildings in the world rather than on this list.
One of these hotels doubles as a public viewpoint — Baiyoke Tower II sells tickets to an observation deck on its 77th floor and a revolving deck on its 84th, the sort of thing usually reserved for the world’s highest observation decks rather than a place you can sleep in.
The tallest hotel in the Americas only ranks fourteenth — New York’s tower at 1717 Broadway is out-topped by eleven hotels across Asia and the Gulf.
Dubai holds eight of these fifteen buildings — and four of them stand on the same street, Sheikh Zayed Road.
At 377.1 metres, Ciel Tower is the tallest building on earth given over entirely to a hotel, and it is also the newest entry on this list. It opened in Dubai Marina in November 2025, taking a record that had stood for seven years, and its 82 floors hold 1,004 rooms and suites behind floor-to-ceiling glass.
The tower tapers as it rises, which is what lets it carry one of the highest rooftop infinity pools anywhere on its 76th floor. Guests reach the upper restaurants and the pool deck by express lift, and on a clear day the view runs from the Palm Jumeirah out across the Gulf. It operates under IHG's Vignette Collection.
At 356.3 metres, the Gevora Hotel was the tallest hotel in the world from 2018 until Ciel Tower overtook it, and it holds second place by the slimmest margin here — it stands just nine-tenths of a metre above the JW Marriott Marquis a few kilometres away. Both are measured to the architectural top, and that is the whole gap between them.
Gevora rises 75 floors on Sheikh Zayed Road, wrapped in gold-toned cladding that makes it conspicuous on a street full of towers competing for attention. It looks across at the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Water Canal, and its upper floors sit high enough that the city's low-rise districts drop out of view entirely.
At 355.4 metres, the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai is the tallest hotel in the world that comes as a matched pair — two identical towers rising side by side in Business Bay. It held the world record from 2012 until 2018, and it gives up second place today by less than a metre.
Archgroup International's Ashok Korgaonkar took the design from the trunk of a date palm, a symbol of Arab culture: the faceted plan of the guest floors follows the shape of the trunk, and the balconies step outward to suggest layered bark. Between them the towers hold well over a thousand rooms, so the building is unusually large in plan as well as tall — most hotels of this height are far narrower. The Dubai Water Canal runs past its foot.
At 333.3 metres, Shimao International Plaza is the tallest hotel building outside the Gulf, and the entry that sits closest to the edge of the rules. The upper 48 of its 60 floors are the Conrad Shanghai, which clears the 80 per cent threshold this list uses — but a nine-storey shopping podium fills the base, which is why some record-keepers leave it out and gave the world title to Dubai instead.
The tower stands a short walk from People's Square in Huangpu, with the Bund and Nanjing Road both within easy reach on foot. Its crown is a slender glass spire lit after dark, and it beats the Rose Rayhaan in Dubai by just 30 centimetres — close enough that the two are effectively tied for fourth.
At 333 metres, the Rose Rayhaan by Rotana was certified by Guinness World Records as the world's tallest hotel when it opened in 2009, a title it held until the JW Marriott Marquis passed it in 2012. It has 72 floors and 462 rooms on Sheikh Zayed Road, a few minutes from the Dubai International Financial Centre.
It opened under the name Rose Tower, and it is one of the very few hotels at this height that serves no alcohol anywhere in the building — Rayhaan is Rotana's dry brand. Rooms on the upper floors look straight down Sheikh Zayed Road towards the Burj Khalifa, and the Financial Centre metro station is directly outside.
At 321 metres, the Burj Al Arab is the most recognisable building on this list and was the tallest hotel in the world for a decade after it opened in 1999. It stands on its own artificial island off Jumeirah Beach, reached from the mainland by a private curving causeway.
The sail-shaped profile is formed by a double-skinned Teflon-coated fabric screen stretched across a steel exoskeleton, which glows from within after dark. Every one of its rooms is a duplex suite, and the atrium behind that screen — open the full height of the tower — is among the tallest in the world.
At 309 metres, the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel is the shorter of the two triangular towers that have anchored this stretch of Dubai's skyline since 2000. Its twin is taller still, but that one is an office building and offices do not qualify here. The hotel occupies 56 floors.
The pair are cut as equilateral triangles in plan, clad in silver and copper-toned glass, and linked at the base by a retail boulevard. When they opened they were the tallest buildings in the Middle East, and the hotel tower remains one of the few skyscraper hotels anywhere designed as half of a purpose-built pair from the outset.
At 304 metres, Baiyoke Tower II is the tallest hotel in Southeast Asia and was the tallest in the world from 1997 until the Burj Al Arab opened two years later. Its 85 floors give it the highest floor count on this list, and it ties exactly with the Wuxi Maoye City Marriott in China — we place Baiyoke first because it was completed seventeen years earlier.
The tower stands in Bangkok's Pratunam garment district, and its top floors are open to non-guests: there is an observation deck on the 77th floor and a revolving roof deck above it on the 84th. The architectural height stops at 304 metres; a mast carries the tip closer to 328, but masts do not count towards this ranking.
At 304 metres, the Wuxi Maoye City Marriott Hotel ties Baiyoke Tower II exactly, and it arrived as one of three supertall towers finished in Wuxi in a single year — 2014 — as the Jiangsu city built its high-rise skyline in one concentrated burst.
Its 68 floors sit above a large retail complex in the city centre, a short high-speed train ride from Shanghai. Wuxi stands on the shore of Lake Tai, one of China's largest freshwater lakes, and the Grand Canal runs through the older part of the city below — so the upper rooms look out over water in two directions.
At 294 metres, The Tower Plaza Hotel is the last entry here to clear the 290-metre mark, and the fourth Sheikh Zayed Road tower to appear on this list. Its 65 floors were completed in 2011 after seven years of construction.
The building is also catalogued as the Khalid Al Attar Tower 2 and traded under the Millennium Plaza name before its current one, which is part of why it is easy to lose track of across different records. The whole tower is given over to the hotel — no offices, no apartments — and that is exactly what earns it a place here when far taller mixed-use buildings miss out.
At 269.7 metres, the Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain Bay is the tallest completed building in Bahrain and the only entry on this list from the island. Its 50 floors stand on a reclaimed island in the middle of Bahrain Bay, reached by a causeway from Manama.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed it as a slab that splits into two shafts near the top, joined by a crown that carries the upper restaurants and gives the building its gapped silhouette. It edges out the Radisson Royal in Dubai by seven-tenths of a metre, which is to say the two are the same height for any practical purpose.
At 269 metres, the Radisson Royal Dubai closes out the run of Sheikh Zayed Road towers on this list, with 60 floors and 471 rooms completed in 2010. It stands within walking distance of the Dubai World Trade Centre and the financial district.
It is the plainest of the Dubai entries — a straightforward rectangular slab rather than a sail, a gold column or a pair of triangles — but the entire building is a hotel, which is more than can be said for several taller Dubai towers with hotels inside them. Its height sits within a metre of the Four Seasons in Bahrain above it.
At 261 metres, the Grand Lisboa is the tallest building in Macau and comfortably the most theatrical entry on this list. It is shaped as a lotus flower opening from a golden spherical base, its upper section cantilevering more than 20 metres out on each side, and the whole facade glows through a run of colours after dark.
The lotus is Macau's own emblem and appears on the territory's flag, so the shape is a civic reference as much as a flourish. The hotel sits at the heart of the Macau peninsula, a few minutes from the Ruins of St. Paul's and the historic centre, and its upper floors look across the water towards Cotai.
1414. Courtyard & Residence Inn Manhattan/Central Park
At 229.4 metres, this is the tallest hotel in the Americas — and the fact that it ranks fourteenth says a good deal about where the world's tall hotels actually get built. It holds two separate Marriott brands in one 68-floor tower at 1717 Broadway: a Courtyard on the lower floors and a Residence Inn stacked above it.
The two share a structure, a lobby and their lifts but run as distinct hotels, with 378 rooms in the Courtyard and 261 suites in the Residence Inn. The tower opened at the end of 2013 a block from Columbus Circle, which puts Central Park, the Broadway theatres and Times Square all within a short walk.
At 226 metres, Swissotel The Stamford is the oldest entry on this list and the building that started the modern race. When it opened in 1986 it was the tallest hotel in the world, and it held that title for eleven years until Baiyoke Tower II passed it. Its 73 floors still make it one of the tallest hotels in Southeast Asia.
I. M. Pei designed it as part of the Raffles City complex above City Hall, one of Singapore's busiest interchanges, and its curved slab has been a fixed point in the skyline for four decades. Every world's-tallest-hotel record since 1986 has been held by a building on this list — a chain that runs from here through Bangkok and Dubai to Ciel Tower.
FAQ: The World’s Tallest Hotels
What is the tallest hotel in the world?
Ciel Tower in Dubai Marina, at 377.1 metres. It opened in November 2025 with 82 floors and 1,004 rooms, taking the record from the Gevora Hotel a few kilometres away. It is the first building anywhere given over entirely to a hotel to pass 370 metres.
Why is the Makkah Clock Royal Tower not the tallest hotel?
Because it is not only a hotel. The 601-metre tower in Mecca contains a very large Fairmont property, but also retail, prayer and other uses, so it counts as a mixed-use skyscraper. This ranking includes only buildings given over almost entirely — at least 80 per cent of their floors — to a hotel.
What is the tallest hotel in the United States?
The combined Courtyard and Residence Inn at 1717 Broadway in Manhattan, at 229.4 metres across 68 floors. It is the tallest hotel in the Americas too, yet it ranks only fourteenth worldwide: every hotel above it stands in Asia or the Gulf.
How is a hotel’s height measured?
By architectural height — the distance from ground level to the architectural top of the building, counting spires but excluding antennas, masts and flagpoles. That is why Baiyoke Tower II is listed here at 304 metres even though the antenna above it reaches higher still.
Which city has the most of the world’s tallest hotels?
Dubai, by a wide margin. Eight of the fifteen buildings on this list are in Dubai, including the top three, and four of those stand on Sheikh Zayed Road alone. No other city contributes more than one entry.
What was the world’s tallest hotel before Ciel Tower?
The Gevora Hotel, which held the title from 2018 at 356.3 metres. Before that the record ran through the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai from 2012, the Rose Rayhaan from 2009, the Burj Al Arab from 1999, Baiyoke Tower II from 1997 and Swissotel The Stamford from 1986.
How do you get to the top of a hotel this tall?
By express lift. Towers at this height run banks of lifts that skip the lower floors entirely and serve only the upper ones — the same engineering problem that produces the fastest elevators in the world. Several of these hotels put their headline restaurant or pool near the very top, so the ride is part of the stay.
Is the tallest hotel the same as the highest hotel room?
No, and the difference is the whole reason this list looks the way it does. The tallest hotel is the tallest building used as a hotel. The highest hotel rooms sit near the top of much taller mixed-use towers — Shanghai Tower’s J Hotel occupies the upper reaches of a 632-metre building, far above anything ranked here. That distinction runs through most of our world record breakers.
