TRAVEL BLURRING THE LINES OF FITNESS AND LUXURY AMID THE SCI-FI GLITZ OF DUBAI

GO ON VACATION.

- RAINBOW NELSON

Come back ripped.

That's the enticing pitch-to be an all-expenses-paid guinea pig for a new kind of luxe fitness hotel, Dubai's SIRO One Za'abeel. What better way to celebrate the big 5-0 than by calling in some reinforcements for my midlife battle with the bulge? I book it, dreaming of my shiny new six-pack and feeling fitter already.

Only as I board my flight to Dubai do I wonder: What exactly have I signed up for? Kerzner International Resorts' fresh-out-of-the-box concept promises an experience "engineered to power your performance." Is that code for "fat camp in the desert"? Have I enrolled to be the plaything of some sadistic ex-Army drill sergeant? Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

In SIRO One Za'abeel's unorthodox lobby, an athletic meeter-and-greeter hands me an espresso, activating my parasympathetic nervous system to calm me down.

It becomes clear where I've landed: a boot camp for modern-day Masters of the Universe. The urban resort boasts six floors of state-of-the-art fitness and recovery "laboratories," spacious "performance-optimized" rooms with en suite fitness areas, and access to 11 top-notch restaurants, each offering mesmerizing views of Dubai's vertiginous skyline.

If you believe the 40foot real-estate-company billboards at the airport of this science-fictional city, Dubai is the "future of the future." And indeed, the tiny, oil-rich nation of the United Arab Emirates a federation of sheikhdoms with more than $1.5 trillion in its various sovereign wealth funds-seems to have a finger in every global enterprise, from artificial intelligence to sports. Dubai, with its glistening skyscrapers, has become a gilded playground for Russian oligarchs, European aristocrats, American tech gurus, Indian tycoons, and Chinese asset managers.