A quiet oasis in a busy city
I’m not sure how we ended up here. At some point back in 2022, we decided to travel to Doha, and I’m very glad we chose this hotel. A later trip to Doha took us to the excellent Mondrian, but for our third Qatar trip, we decided to head back to the Al Messila.
How we booked the Al Messila
This was our second trip to this resort. Last time we visited was just prior to the World Cup, and a few weeks after we left, the French national team used the Al Messila as its base.
On our last trip to this resort, we split our time between two room types: a standard double room in the main hotel building and a villa on the grounds. This time we booked the villa for eight nights. The room in the main building was great, with plenty of space and a balcony, but we enjoyed the privacy (and the pool) of the villa.
Using Avios Hotels we originally booked the villa for £4,178 (£522/night) on a fully refundable rate. As we got closer to our trip, the price dropped. We ended up cancelling and rebooking the hotel three times, dropping the price to £3,323 (£415/night), then £2,875 (£359/night) and finally £2,524 (£315/night).
That reduced rate was an absolute bargain, given how good the resort is and the size of the villa.
Where is the Al Messila located?
The resort sits next to a busy link road and across the street from the American Embassy. There is very little around the hotel, with nothing of note that is sensibly walkable.
We did venture out one night to use the Metro, but the walk to that station was 20 minutes, and at times, there was no footpath. We would not do that again, although the metro was very clean, modern and well priced.
However, it is incredibly easy to get around Doha with Uber, and cost-effective too. Almost every journey we took was twenty minutes, and with Uber Black, the price was around £8 to £10 each time. Every trip was easy with minimal traffic, and our cars arrived quickly, usually less than five minutes after we ordered them and often faster than that.
What’s check-in like at the Al Messila
We arrived in Doha around 6pm, and after half an hour in the Qatar arrivals lounges, it took us 20 minutes in a taxi to reach the Al Messila. Check-in was 10 minutes, and then we were taken by buggy to our villa, which took less than 2 minutes.
Our home for the next eight days was one of the closest villas to the main building, which meant that getting to breakfast or to the reception to get a taxi to the city was easy and less than two minutes on foot.
There are villas much deeper into the resort that are further away, and I would estimate they’re around five to eight minutes’ walk back to the main building.
Our luggage arrived a few minutes after we did. Over the next eight days, we used the concierge service several times and found it to be fast and friendly.
What was the villa like?
The villas are dotted around the right side of the hotel grounds. The main building sits at the top of the site and houses the standard hotel rooms and suites, the lobby, and the restaurants. On the left-hand side of the resort is the kids’ centre, and in the southeast is the giant spa and wellness centre.
The villas range from our one-bedroom (the cheapest) to a giant four-bedroom. I have seen that priced at £1,400 per night. All the villas have their own pools, kitchens, living and dining spaces.
I absolutely love this villa. It’s a one-storey (the four-bedroom villa sits over two), and the back garden and pool have high fences for privacy. Trees sit at the back of the property, and it was exceptionally quiet and private. In between trips out, and dining in the on-site restaurants, this was a wonderful space to sit, swim or just laze around the pool.
Inside, there is a spacious living area with seating for four. There’s a sofa, an additional chair, and a good-sized TV. There are patio doors that lead to the outside space.
Between the living room and the kitchen is a small desk, complete with a phone and a comfy chair.
A kitchen features a breakfast bar and two stools, and comes with a built-in microwave oven, dishwasher, washing machine, fridge freezer, and a hob. There is also a kettle and a Nespresso machine.
Whilst the kitchen has many cupboards and drawers, they are empty. You get a grand total of two coffee cups, two plastic stirrers, two small espresso cups and two saucers. No cutlery, plates or anything else you might need to actually make use of the kitchen.
The fridge comes stocked with soft drinks, however these are chargeable. There’s also a snack tray with a standard offering of sweets, chocolate and crisps that are also chargeable.
When we arrived, we ordered food and drink from a supermarket, which the Al Messila staff brought to us from reception on a buggy. It is very easy to order food from restaurants or shops in Qatar, and the concierge drop-off makes it seamless to get your food or groceries.
There’s a big dining room table in the villa that can seat six people. We ate here twice when we ordered room service (which was exceptional).
The hallway in the villa features a window that looks out to the garden and an always-on water feature. There is no way to turn this off, so you can hear it in the bedroom at night. Water isn’t the worst noise in the world, but it would have been good to have a switch.
Our time in Qatar included two key events: Valentine’s Day, and the start of Ramadan. Valentines came first, and after a day out of the villa, we came home to find a cute cake-based gift.
There’s a small guest bathroom leading off the hallway, with a toilet and a sink. It’s an attractive little bathroom that lets you avoid wandering through the bedroom.
The bedroom is at the far right-hand side of the villa, next to the guest bathroom. It’s secluded from the main living area, so one person can get a restful sleep while another watches TV.
The bedroom is big, with a super king-sized bed, an armchair and two built-in wardrobes that are disproportionately small for the room. They really are tiny and are suited more to a hotel where you stay a night or two. Given how much space there is in the villa, it’s a surprising fail.
The bed was extremely comfy, and we enjoyed some restful sleep for our eight nights in Doha. As the villas are far from the main building, they offer incredibly peaceful bedrooms.
The villa bathroom
The main bathroom is large and features both a bath and a shower. The latter is powerful and features more jets than Doha airport.
You also have a second shower outside, which I ended up swapping to most days. There’s something about an outside shower that makes me happy, and you are completely secluded, meaning that you can shower in privacy.
Toiletries are from “Eco.Fresh Camellia”, a brand which seems to be focused on selling to hotels rather than consumers. I am not precious about shower gels, and it was absolutely fine, but given the price and status of the hotel, perhaps a well-known brand would have been better.
I did find that the towels and toiletries were a little stingy. We had to ask for extra towels, and if you happen to be in your villa all day and you avoid housekeeping service, you’re immediately on the back foot.
Food and drink at the Al Messila
The resort has a good selection of places to eat and drink:
- The main Deli Kitchen, where breakfast and dinner are served
- The Taj Rasoi Indian restaurant, which serves lunch and dinner.
- The Parisia, which is IMHO the nicest restaurant in the resort. It servers Perisan food, not French and opens for lunch and dinner.
- The Wa’Ha poolside lounge, which sits in a sunken pit next to the pool, making it private and quiet. There’s also seating on a veranda between the pool and the hotel.
- There’s a little-used coffee spot called Elixi, and a small lounge in the lobby called Al Amma.
- Finally, there’s the “Luxury After Eight” restaurant right at the bottom of the resort, although this is independent and not owned by the hotel.
There’s also room service, which we used on two nights. There’s an extensive menu that seems to cover everything you’d hope for.
The quality of food is high for a hotel, and the meals we ordered were excellent. In other, recent, trips I’ve felt like the breadth of options available on room service menus has been shrinking, and the quality reducing. The Al Messila did not get this memo.
Within a twenty-minute drive are hundreds of restaurants, ranging from fast-food imports to high-end eateries. Doha is an incredible city for food.
What’s the breakfast like at the Al Messila
This was both a high point and a low point on our trip. Breakfast is served every day from 7:30am to 11am in the Deli Kitchen, which is a beautiful space that looks out onto the pool. There’s some seating outside, but the majority is inside. Even in February, it can get very warm.
The breakfast offering is wide, covering Western and Eastern dishes, and it has some premium items that you wouldn’t normally expect at a buffet (Sushi and Smoked Salmon).
There’s also a great selection of pastries, freshly made pancakes, French toast, and waffles. I’d estimate around fifty different options in total.
The fresh juices are just that – freshly squeezed and delicious. There are four different juice types each day. The coffee was made by a barista and was fantastic. They even let you take a coffee with you in a takeaway cup, which (once I found out) I did every day.
We are jinxed when it comes to ordering coffee, however. I have lost track of the number of stays where it’s gone badly wrong: either the wrong coffee arrives, or they lose the order. This happened a couple of times at the Al Messila. It was frustrating – one day I had finished my breakfast before I got my caffeine fix, and I pride myself on my lengthy, three-course breakfasts, so they had plenty of time.
There were days when some food wasn’t replenished quickly enough at breakfast. A couple of times, we experienced a waffle drought, and the pancake area could end up as a desolate memory of what once was. These are minor things that are more visible when everything else is so good.
Overall, though, the staff in the Deli Kitchen were very good. We really enjoyed engaging with them in the morning, and they worked hard to make the experience for us positive and friendly.
The gym at the Al Messila
This is, without a doubt, my favourite hotel gym. It’s beautiful, big, quiet and has modern equipment. It’s on par with a commercial gym, and it has always been empty or close to empty when I visited.
There’s chilled water and towels situated at both ends of the gym, and plenty of screens showing sports. It felt a little like one of those luxury five-star London-based gyms you sometimes see on TikTok.
This is actually only one of two gyms. There’s a second female-only gym located deeper into the health centre, which is a giant two-storey building.
The gym was a great place to spend an hour each morning. The five-minute walk from the villa to the fitness centre was equally a joy in the mild Doha heat.
The Spa and wellness centre
The Spa and Gym are located in a separate building, which is huge. It takes up the same footprint as the main hotel building, and it houses a lot over its two floors:
- A large mixed-gender gym and a dedicated female-only gym
- A mixed swimming pool and a female-only pool. The mixed pool was ok. The female-only pool looks, from the pictures, to be a stunning space.
- The male and female changing rooms are high-end and have their own saunas and steam rooms.
- There are countless treatment rooms, split into mixed and female-only.
We had assumed that, due to cultural norms, no couples’ massages would be offered. This was not the case: we were able to book a sixty-minute treatment where we had both of us in the same room, and both therapists were female.
The Spa operates from 9am to 11pm, meaning it’s easy to book a last-minute treatment.
The treatment room was huge. There was the main space with two tables, and then off to one side, another room with two mysterious chairs, which I assume are used as part of certain treatments.
We booked two sixty-minute deep tissue massages on the day before we flew back. At that point, we didn’t know we’d be using the amazing Dior Spa in the Qatar garden lounge. Whilst that was off the scale, the Al Messila massage was perfectly fine. The price, before tip, was £120 per person which was a little on the pricey side. It’s unlikely we would use the spa again, given the cost.
The verdict on the Al Messila
It can be deeply disappointing when you revisit a hotel for the second time. Service can change, a hotel can age disgracefully, and you can have false memories of how great the hotel actually was. None of these things were true with the Al Messila.
There were minor issues: a lack of towels and toiletries, the slow coffee service and a couple of breakfasts where we felt a little let down by the food. They are annoyances, absolutely, but the pros significantly outweigh the cons at the Al Messila.
I adore this resort for many reasons: It’s a relaxing place to exist. The walk to the gym takes you through a beautiful garden, complete with water features. As it’s Doha, that’s a sunny, warm walk.
The staff are friendly and attentive, from the servers in the restaurants to the pool staff and the housekeepers. The doormen at the front of the hotel open your car door every time you depart or arrive with a smile.
It’s also an excellent location. Nothing is walkable, but you can travel out of the city and to the Mall of Qatar in twenty minutes, or get into Doha itself in the same amount of time. The Place Vendome, possibly the most beautiful shopping centre I’ve visited, is twenty minutes away. The two main museums in Doha are…twenty minutes away. Travel just seemed exceptionally easy.
Then there’s the villa. We have too many lazy days around our own pool, either in it, sitting around it, or lying out on the sofas on the decking. Evenings in the villa were great, the sofa was comfortable and it didn’t feel cramped like a hotel room. And we had some great nights’ sleep here too, in an oversized, comfy bed.
I guess the real verdict on any hotel is, would you come again? I spoke to a fellow Brit in the steam room, and it was his third visit to the resort. We’re already planning to come back again in 2026, and we can’t wait
Rating the Al Messila Resort in Doha
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