Our Abu Dhabi Desert Camp, Now on Airbnb

Search Airbnb for Abu Dhabi and the results are almost entirely apartments: Reem Island, Yas Island, Saadiyat, the Corniche, Khalifa City. That is a good answer if you want to be in the city. It is the only answer the platform currently gives you, which is why this listing exists.

Khayal Al Sahra sits at Al Khatim, a quiet stretch of desert between Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, away from the main roads and surrounded by high dunes. You are not booking a room in a resort that happens to have sand nearby. You are booking the camp itself, and for the length of your stay nobody else is on it.

Most desert tours in the UAE are convoys. Thirty strangers, dune bashing, a buffet, a show, and back on the bus. This is deliberately the opposite of that, and it is worth being clear about what you are trading. There is no dune bashing here and no nightly programme running to a stopwatch.

You arrive as the light turns gold. There is bukhoor at the majlis and Arabic coffee poured the way it is poured in Emirati homes, then a guided camel walk over the high dunes at sunset, then supper cooked live rather than reheated. After that the evening is yours, and the main thing the desert offers at that hour is how quiet it is.

The Airbnb listing is new, so it has no reviews yet and no rating. We would rather say that plainly than let you find out at the booking screen. What is not new is the camp: a women-led team has run it since 2012, and the company holds a 4.9 rating from 60 reviews on Google across weddings, corporate events and celebrations hosted here.

Airbnb also shows that a smoke alarm and a carbon monoxide alarm are not reported for this listing. That is accurate for an open desert camp of tents and a majlis rather than an enclosed building, and it is worth understanding before you book rather than after.

There is no fixed nightly rate published. Pricing moves with the season and the dates, so the listing asks you to add dates, and you are welcome to message us first if you would rather talk it through.

Airbnb is the right route for a group who want the camp for a night. It is the wrong route for a wedding, a gala, a product launch or a corporate offsite, because those need a site visit, a build, catering design, crew and often a permit. Book those directly with us instead and we will quote them properly.

It is the same camp either way, which is the point. The events side has run here since 2012, and the Airbnb listing simply opens the quieter version of it to people who want the place to themselves for an evening.