Emirates Palace -The world's costliest hotel at $3.8 billion

Fancy bathing in champagne, sleeping between scented sheets and cooling off round the pool with the help of hotel staff armed with water sprays? Everyone will be treated like royalty; after all, they are at the Palace. Costing a rumored $3.8 billion (£2 billion), the Emirates Palace is the most expensive hotel ever built. Its owner, the government of Abu Dhabi, knows that the Palace will never make a profit. But that doesn’t matter as the idea was to impress the world by creating the most lavish seven-star experience conceivable. Here’s an exclusive sneak preview to find out what on earth they spent all that money on. It is a colossus- the architects describe it as the Taj Mahal of the Middle East, though its dusky-pink granite and rose-colored marble facade, delicate Arabic carvings, endless domes and scalloped arches are much more in keeping with Granada’s magnificent Alhambra. Just to walk around the place would take almost an hour.