Dorchester Collection has nine or ten legendary houses depending on which of its own pages you read, and exactly one branded residence outside London.
Position
The residential arm of LHL-012 Dorchester Collection. Its one substantial expression is The Lana Residences on the Marasi Bay Marina in Dubai, commissioned by OMNIYAT, designed by Foster + Partners with interiors by Gilles & Boissier, and managed by Dorchester Collection rather than licensed to anyone. Two interlocking towers: the hotel — the group’s first in the Middle East and Asia — and a 32-storey residential tower of 39 residences, six of them penthouses on the top three floors with private pools, running to 17,700 square feet.
⚑ Why it matters that this house is managed and not licensed
Part VII exists to record the difference. Aston Martin at LHL-A-001 Aston Martin Residences licenses a design and a trademark and nobody from Gaydon runs the building. Here the operator of the hotel is the operator of the residences, and the residents use the hotel’s facilities through a connected arrangement rather than a contract with a name. The Private Residences register’s own field work found that the largest single group of branded residences is operated rather than licensed — thirty of eighty assessed — which is not how the category is usually described, including in this Library’s earlier entries.
⚑ Dates and counts that do not agree
The hotel was announced in 2021 for 2023, pushed to February 2024, and the official opening was held on 24 April 2024; one property database records the actual opening as January 2024. Dorchester Collection describes itself as nine legendary properties on one page and The Lana as its tenth hotel on another. Residence sizes are given as 3,900–10,100 sq ft in one account and 9,400–17,700 for the penthouses in another; both may be right and describe different things. The Library carries the spread.
Candour
⚑ This entry rests on the developer’s and the operator’s own material plus the architect’s. Nothing here establishes what the residences sold for, who owns them, or how the service arrangement is structured — which is the fact a buyer would most want and the one nobody publishes. Whether Dorchester Collection intends further residences is not established; §22 admits no entry on an announcement.