There are so many stylish luxury hotels vying to pamper and indulge these days that it can be hard to know where to splash your cash. So it’s a relief when one haute hotelier comes up with an idea that is so comically awful it can be crossed off the must-visit list for good.

The new Banyan Tree resort at Al Areen in Bahrain is not only the silliest hotel in the Middle East – quite an achievement in a region noted for al-bling! style-over-sub-stance properties – it is the silliest venture the usually top-class Asian hotel outfit has ever embarked on. Whoever gave it the go-ahead should be sentenced to spend the rest of their “career” running a kids’ donkey park. In the East Midlands.

There is so much wrong with the Banyan Tree that it is hard to know where to start, but let’s begin with location. You might think of Bahrain as an airport stop-over where you stock up with duty-free before going somewhere more interesting. And you'd be right. Bahrain is so boring even the expats who live there call it “the Isle of Wight of the Middle East”.

For holidaymakers, the Gulf island offers watersports and horse riding. And that’s, erm, it. Unlike Dubai or Oman, there is little wildlife, limited diving, no mountains, no cutting-edge architecture, no designer shopping, no reclaimed Palm islands, no ski domes, no Michelin-star restaurants, no nightlife and no razzle-dazzle seven-star hotels where you can watch Russian women with exuberant hair and cantilevered chests prowl the pool.

Instead, the high point for most locals is going to the Hawaiian-themed Trader Vic’s bar and collecting the little plastic men that decorate the Menehune Juice cocktail.

The position of the resort itself is catastrophic. The Banyan Tree Al Areen, the brochure claims, “nestles in the heart of the Arabian Desert”. “Nestle” may mean different things to different people, but one thing it does not mean to anyone is being in the middle of a giant building site.

All around the hotel a small army of sun-dried Asian labourers toils night and day in the 40C (105F) heat to build Oryx Hills, a development of more than 100 villas for expats and foreign investors. The noise, dust, bulldozers, quarry and the shanty town of cabins make a mockery of the promised “tranquility and spiritual serenity”.

Things don’t get much better when you make it through the wasteland to the glass-fronted lobby. When watersports is one of the few attractions Bahrain offers, you would think that the Banyan Tree would be on the coast. Through the windows, I could see the mint-choc-chip green waters of the Gulf – ten miles away, past the children’s water park. No briny prebreakfast dip for me, then.

Making the resort villa-only may be a good idea, but arranging the 78 mini-walled compounds in neat rows running down the hillside, with precious little greenery in between, makes the place look like a posh retirement home. In my villa the curious mix of Asia-meets-Arabia dark woods and bright tiles did create the promised “understated, elegant” interior, but, for me, the pared-down aesthetic was ruined by the giant Vertigo bar on stilts that hovers above the main reception like a space ship. Gazing up at the red and blue spotlights and gawdy twinkling-star lasers in the roof, I felt like I had arrived at Cinderella-Rockefeller’s disco in Southend, rather than a boutique desert bolt-hole.

Size matters in the money-no-object Middle East and the resort boasts “the largest spa in the Middle East (the size of 38 tennis courts)”. Sadly, big is one thing a spa should never be. With long, echoing, sterile corridors between the changing rooms, the hydrothermal pools, and the treatment rooms, it felt more like a Victorian sanatorium than a “a sanctuary of wellness and rejuvenation”. I half expected to be handed a straitjacket, instead of a bath robe, and carted off by a team of psychiatric nurses.

The treatments are first-rate, as you would expect. My masseuse unThai’d my knots.

But because of the heat – it reached 40C when I stayed – all the treatments take place indoors. Eyes closed, lying in a glass box, listening to the plinkety-plink piped music over the whirr of the air-conditioning unit, I could have been in the Elemis Day Spa off Bond Street, rather than in the Arabian desert.

Service is a hysterical mix of the over-the-top and the clunky. When I arrived, hot-and-cold-running slaves bearing pyramids of scented, chilled towels and sticky drinks prostrated themselves before me to pledge their dedication to my vacational pleasure. Every morning my personal butler assured me that my every wish, my tiniest whim, was at the Banyan Tree’s command.

Except that it wasn’t. One of the joys of having a private villa is private dining, but with no kitchen in or near the one-bed-room villas, all the food is cooked in the main kitchen and carted over in golf buggies. By the time my traditional Arab barbecue reached my villa, my hot food was cold and my cold food was hot. When it’s 32C at night, getting an ice-cream that hasn’t already melted doesn’t seem too much to ask – especially when villas start at £1,400 a night and can easily reach £1,800 when meals, drinks, spa treatments and activities are taken into account.

All hotel operators want to be seen to be green and there was the usual brochure in my villa assuring me that Banyan Tree resorts “personify (sic) ecological vision... and a steely faith to heal and preserve the earth”. Set aside – if you can – the issue of how green it is to fly for seven hours to a giant air-conditioned box in the desert, with 80 swimming pools, countless fountains and a hydrothermal spa featuring an ice-igloo, and consider one of the activities the resort offers: Hummer driving in the desert. For £90, you can drive the six-litre, three tonne Hummer H2 in the off-road course built alongside Bahrain’s Formula 1 circuit “handily located only five minutes away”. Driving a US military vehicle that does gallons to the mile, not miles to the gallon, may be fun, but it scarcely affirms a “steely faith to heal the earth”.

After so much woe, there’s only one thing to do. Order a stiff drink. But wait. What’s this? I can’t. The Banyan Tree does not have an alcohol licence. The nearest drink is half an hour away at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Bahrain or the back-street BMMI off-licence, where a bottle of Lebanon’s Château Musar costs an eye-watering £50.

All of which leaves us where, exactly? Well, if your idea of a holiday is spending thousands of pounds, going to the most boring country on earth, to while away the days behind the fortress-like walls of your private villa in the most unPC hotel in the world, the Banyan Tree Bahrain is your cup of camel’s milk yoghurt. If, on the other hand, you are looking for an enjoyable, genuine boutique desert spa experience, try the five-star tented Al Maha resort in Dubai. It’s less expensive, ten times the quality, and you can enjoy sundown with a sundowner.

What do you think? Email: yoursay@thetimes.co.uk

Need to know A five-night stay with Tropical Locations (020-7229 9199, www.tropical-locations.com) in November at the Banyan Tree, Bahrain, in a one-bed Desert Pool Villa with breakfast starts at £3,069pp B&B, based on two adults sharing. The package includes economy flights on Gulf Air, Emirates, or British Airways and transfers.

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