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Travelers are running out of new places to discover, but there’s a hidden gem in sight.
Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast stretches for more than a thousand miles, from the northern border with Jordan in the Gulf of Aqaba to Yemen in the far south.
Much of that, outside of big cities like Jeddah, is undeveloped coastline of turquoise water, offshore islands, pristine beaches and coral reefs.
Now, as a component of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan to diversify the economy, reduce its dependence on oil revenues, and enact social reforms, a series of ultra-luxury projects, touted through government-funded developers as the pinnacle of ecological consciousness, are underway on the shores of the Red Sea.
“It’s exciting to see this openness to the world,” says Firas Jundi, PADI’s regional director in the Middle East, the professional organization of diving instructors.
“I grew up in Saudi and started diving there in 1989, and then the north was only accessible via four-wheel drives.
“When you reach the shore, you see that it is pristine, intact, with a transparent visibility, like a huge pond full of fish.
“It’s not a diving destination, so you can believe how protected the coral is. “
The Red Sea region includes 28,000 square kilometers of seashore and 90 offshore islands about three hundred miles north of Jeddah, and AMAALA, farther north in the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Nature Reserve, is among Saudi Arabia’s so-called giga projects.
According to the promoters, they will have tourist complexes that will offer a multitude of water sports and other activities, as well as artistic, cultural and educational, in the sea, the desert, the dunes and the mountains.
Both will be served through the upcoming Red Sea International Airport, scheduled to open for domestic flights in 2023.
“When I first got here, I went to the islands and I saw about seven shades of blue, I asked myself, ‘How many shades of blue can you have in the sea?'” says Rosanna Chopra, Red’s Executive Director of Destination Development. “Sea Global, the project development umbrella company, owned by the Saudi government-controlled Public Investment Fund (PIF).
“Even now I ask myself, ‘What is this position and why has it remained so secret for so long?'”
“The islands and the marine life and the dolphins, it’s just like some sort of fantastical world. You become really overwhelmed by the responsibility of trying to preserve it because there is a reason why it’s so stunning and so precious and so beautiful.
“We can’t rush, we have to do it responsibly, we have to do it well. “
Jundi has traveled along the Saudi Red Sea coast and believes tourism is huge.
“When life stopped Covid, the corals [elsewhere] took a break and now I’ve started diving again, I see a lot more marine life, bigger marine animals,” he said.
“It gives you an idea of what he looks like in a position that’s not open to any activity.
“The exciting thing is that they don’t need to rush. They don’t need to go to any other busy destination like Egypt.
“It’s just diving, there are a lot of other interesting things in Saudi Arabia that are full of ancient sites and deserts. I think diving is just the tip of the iceberg that Saudi Arabia seeks to promote. “
The Red Sea project, between the towns of Umluj and Al-Wajh, will expand 22 of the 90 islands and run on 100 percent renewable energy, the developer said. By 2030, it is expected to have 50 hotels, 8,000 rooms and up to 1,000 residential properties.
According to Chopra, “regenerative” tourism is the buzzword in projects to travel responsibly, maintain the local network and environment, and offer transformative reporting to visitors.
“I think luxury is being redefined,” Chopra says.
The sandy expanses of the Ummahat Islands will be home to the first of the Red Sea developments, which will open in late 2023. The St. Regis Red Sea Resort will be a water sports center designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma with hotels in villas on land. and water.
Nujuma, a reserve of the Ritz-Carlton in Ummahat, will have a dive center.
Shura Island will be a 30-minute drive from the airport, connected via a 1. 2-kilometer bridge, and will act as the central island, made up of 11 low-rise resorts, designed to resemble corals washed up on the beach.
There will be a golf course, marina and restaurants.
Two resorts inland, Desert Rock and Southern. The dunes will make the most of the vegetation landscape of the coast.
Sheybarah, 45 minutes by boat from the mainland, is being touted by developers as a hyper-luxury, self-sustaining resort featuring a string of over-water pods which architecture firm Killa Design says mirror the bubbles of a diver.
“I challenge anyone not to look at the water and ask, ‘How can I get in, under or above?’They’re going to have to be a part of it,” Chopra says.
AMAALA’s progression will begin with Triple Bay, a wellness center and center for water sports and other activities.
A marina will cater to the entire foreign boating industry and a Marine Life Institute will be a clinical study center and tourist destination with 10 spaces ranging from augmented truth reports to underwater walkways, submersibles and night diving.
Triple Bay will open in 2024 and there will soon be a new coastal island and coastal progression. Once completed, AMAALA will offer more than 3000 hotel rooms in 25 hotels and approximately 900 villas and apartments, all powered by what developers say is one hundred percent renewable energy and operating with a 0 carbon footprint.
For the Red Sea and AMAALA, seaplanes, boats and electric cars will transport visitors from the new airport to their resort, with their checked luggage to their destination.
“Our task is to open it intelligently,” he says Chopra. No it’s not just about learning how to sail, kitesurf or foil, but also about respecting the sea. Mother Nature is bigger than all of us and the more you respect her, the more you enjoy the playground that is water.
“We need you to leave us feeling that you have not only contributed to the regeneration of our coral reefs and our planet, but that you have also regenerated yourself as a human being and that is a very complicated thing to do or relocate to another destination. To be able to explore this domain through the power of herbs it will be an overwhelming experience for people.
Governments have set a limit of one million visitors per year to the Red Sea and 500,000 to Amaala, but the question is whether such a limit will be necessary. Given Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, will tourists come?
“Of course, tourists will come,” says Jundi, who was born in Syria but is founded in the United Arab Emirates.
“I go to Saudi Arabia 3 times a year and you’ll start to feel the diversity that’s happening with this new vision. “
Chopra added, “Like many countries that have gone through troubled and confusing times for other countries, we all have to live in a world where other people can evolve, and I can’t speak enough of the young people of the kingdom.
“People will be surprised when they come. The hospitality of the Saudis will make them crumble. “
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