When I opened the heavy wooden door, a butler in an immaculate white jacket asked to come in. He wheeled in a table, on which had been placed an orchid, a silver spiral of small jars and a domed silver cover big enough to conceal a whole goose.

The butler pushed the table to the seat at the end of the bed, extended one side, and lifted off the cover with a majestic flourish – to reveal my toasted sandwich.

He then reached under the table and – from an internal oven – presented a bowl of french fries. With a short bow and another flourish to close the door behind him, he was gone.

Room service had never seemed so grandiose. But then, nobody has built a hotel like the Emirates Palace before.

When the government of Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates' capital, realised the nation's oil reserves – or the market for them – might not last forever, it saw tourism as the future. So it planned a hotel unlike any other.

Dubai, three hours further along the coast, seemed to have the luxury-hotel market covered with the sail-shaped Burj al-Arab and the Palm Jumeirah.

But the Emirates Palace trumps even those icons to wealth with a simple fact: it doesn't feel like a hotel as much as a palace that is being used as a hotel.

To say no expense has been spared is an understatement – the highest estimate puts the cost of its construction at $A2.4 billion.

The Emirates Palace, which sits on a million-square-metre corner of beachfront land to the north of the city's centre, comprises a central domed structure flanked by two huge wings of guest rooms and suites.

Each wing has its own pool: one is a relaxation pool with spas, the other an adventure pool with water slides and a "lazy river" where the water is circulated by a jet-propelled current.

At the back of the hotel is a 1.3km stretch of private beach – the longest in Abu Dhabi. It's about a kilometre between the two wings, by chauffeur-driven golf buggy outside or a rather long walk inside.

Step inside the Emirates Palace, and you pass through numerous sets of double doors, their handles encrusted with Swarovski crystals the size of two-dollar coins. There are 16 crystals embedded in each double door, and literally thousands of sets of doors.

Whisking people between floors are a total of 104 lifts. Corridors are as wide and as high as apartment blocks, and where two pathways meet, there are often thick pillars covered in gold leaf that ascend to vaulted ceilings with chandeliers.

Extravagant floral displays garnish every other atrium, and there are 12,000 pieces of signage – as you just can't help but get lost at least once.

Yet the architecture is only one part of the package. There are more than 2000 staff – two or three per guest – representing 50 nationalities.

My wife was given a bouquet of nine orange roses as soon as we arrived in the huge gold lobby, and we had been sat down in two wide armchairs while an entire team of people checked us in.

We were introduced to our personal butler, who showed us around our room. The bed was so wide I could have comfortably slept at any angle and still not encountered the edges.

When we ventured outside, there were yet more staff on hand. They watched the beach and placed towels on sun lounges for us.

They were ready to be hitting partners had we wished to play tennis; if we wanted to jog and didn't want to be alone, staff would run with us.

After consuming the "Earl of Sandwich" (my toasted tuna sarnie), we got to meet assistant manager Zahid Noon, who took us on a blister-inducing tour.

He showed us parts of the palace mere mortals would probably have missed as they were searching for their rooms: the palace's own 1200-seat theatre; three ballrooms that can be turned into a single room capable of holding 2500 guests; the new spa built in Thai and Moroccan styles.

I wasn't surprised that the gym was quiet – just getting around the hotel was enough of a workout. But our smart young host said it wasn't the scale of the palace that made it stand out.

"The whole point of this hotel is not just that it's big, but in its attention to detail," he said. "Everything is hand-picked, hand-built, hand-made."

We strolled past the cigar bar, which has tobacco leaves inlaid into the wall. Further on was the Blue Salon, a luxurious lounge area with a high, arched ceiling.

Abu Dhabi's coastline is broken up into an archipelago of more than 200 islands, and an exhibition in one corner of the hotel showed plans to put many of these pieces of land to full use.

A Formula One track will almost entirely occupy Yas Island, adding the UAE to the racing drivers' calendar. There are also plans for a Ferrari theme park.

Saadiyat Island – translated as Happiness Island – will be turned into a tourists' playground with its own Louvre and Guggenheim museums.

Abu Dhabi's re-created Louvre may even have access to the art collection of the original site, including the Mona Lisa.

The writer was a guest of the Emirates Palace Hotel and Etihad Airways.

The Sunday Telegraph

ABU DHABI

Getting there: Etihad Airways flies Sydney to Abu Dhabi from about $2460 return, including taxes and fuel surcharge. Search for the best deals in flights and hotels

Stay: We stayed at the Emirates Palace Hotel. A coral room is about $400 a night including tax; most expensive suite, the Palace Grand, is about $15,600 a night.

When to go: Hottest months of July and August can see temperatures of 48C; from May to September, 40C can be reached.