Jumeirah Burj Al Arab

This guide to the Burj Al Arab in Dubai opens with a stunt on the hotel's helipad in February two thousand and five, when Andre Agassi and Roger Federer knocked balls across a grass court bolted two hundred and ten metres above the Persian Gulf while a helicopter filmed it. From there it traces architect Tom Wright's nineteen ninety-four sail-shaped design, the hotel's nineteen ninety-nine opening on its own artificial island, and the origin of a rating claim the hotel itself never made. Listen for how a British travel writer's stray sentence turned into a myth Jumeirah simply let stand.