Ren Lewis

Ah, Dubai. City of opulence, imagination, and opportunity.

A place where the highest levels of modernity collide with the history of an old fishing town.

I could tell you about my exploration in the spice markets, what it felt like to shop for jewlery in the gold souks, or finally ticking ” Ride a camel” off my bucketlist

But this blog (unfortunately) is about how I randomly got appendicitis on my trip, and how the Shangri-La hotel’s staff made me feel more like a family member than a guest.

On the last day of a quick four-day trip, I went for a walk up the street from my hotel to a Tim Horton’s ( as a Canadian, there’s no cooler feeling than ordering a chocolate dip donut and a double double in the desert)

The cafe sits diagonally across from the Burj Khalifa, where I grabbed a table that placed it in perfect view.

“I can’t believe I’m really here,” I thought, as I sipped my coffee and pulled out my journal. I have this thought a lot when I travel. My dream since childhood has always been to see the world, so when I find myself somewhere new, I really try to ground myself in the moment.

It wasn’t too long after I closed my journal that I started to feel some pain in my stomach. I was also really tired from all the activities of the last few days so I decided to walk back to my hotel room at the Shangri-La.

My plan: rest the pain away so that I could enjoy the last day of my Emirati adventure.

But what started as manageable discomfort, quickly turned into intense nausea, vomiting, and the sharpest pains I’d ever felt in my life.

I went from enjoying a delicious coffee staring at the Burj Khalifa, to running back and forth to the washroom in less than two hours.

As the time for checkout got closer, I could barely even move. I had thrown up so many times and was in so much pain, that it felt like i had absolutely zero strength in my body.

My husband, who was pacing the room trying to figure out what to do, decided to let the hotel know to see if we could extend our room for more time.

They graciously agreed to give us until 2pm, which was still hours away so I thought “for sure by then, I’ll be ok”

But as time passed, the pain just got worse. My husband was running back and forth between the hotel staff, who sent up teas, and hot water bottles to my room.

Eventually, I fell asleep, but the pain wasn’t going away. At about 2pm, they called us to check in, and at that point, we decided that I needed to see a doctor as soon as possible.

The hotel arranged the service for us, and in a span of hours, I went from having the time of my life on a desert safari to being hooked up to an IV in a luxury hotel room. (make sure you don’t skip out on that travel insurance, friends!)

To make a long story short, they gave me something that numbed the pain, but I didn’t get the proper diagnosis that my appendix needed to be removed until I got back home two days later ( a literal miracle that my appendix held out for two more days)

At no point, during this scary experience, did we feel rushed or hurried at the hotel. They let us keep the room until 7pm at no extra charge, and sent the general manager and many staff to check up with us along the way.

In those moments, a luxury hotel transfomed into a place of care and support in a very unexpected turn on our trip.

When we checked out, everyone in the lobby knew what was happening. They all kept asking how I felt, and the general manager came to meet with me before we left.

There’s a lot of buzz right now around luxury travel, and how it’s shifting from upgrades, and big names to personalization. The Shangri-La reminded me that in a world that feels uneasy and upside down, luxury doesn’t have to be flashy, expensive or complicated. It can be as simple as showing up for each other, human to human. Kindness, genuine concern, not feeling rushed or pressured in a moment of difficulty, feeling cared for…these are luxuries that can’t be bought. They can only be found inside of genuine people who care about others.

Luxury hotels, and businesses have a unique opportunity to be a ray of hope for their guests, and it begins with their front-line staff, their managers, the people who can transform a gorgeous property into a place with heart. I hope my story inspires hotels around the world to reward the people who fill that word “luxury” with warmth.