Skip to content Skip to Search
Skip navigation

Red Sea Global links up with Kingdom for $530m resort

By Gavin Gibbon
The Red Sea Four Seasons resort will have 149 rooms and suites, plus 31 residential properties Red Sea Global
The Red Sea Four Seasons resort will have 149 rooms and suites, plus 31 residential properties
  • Joint venture to build Four Seasons
  • Shura Island site to open in 2025
  • Giga-project will have 50 resorts in total

Red Sea Global and Kingdom Holding Company have agreed a SAR2 billion ($530 million) joint venture to develop and own a Four Seasons resort at the Red Sea giga-project.

The luxury development, scheduled to open in early 2025, will be built on Shura Island, the main hub of the 22-island giga-project.

The Four Seasons resort will have 149 rooms and suites, plus 31 residential properties, six restaurants, meeting and events spaces, a marine discovery centre, and facilities for children. 

Kingdom Holding Company, the investment firm of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, owns 23.75 percent of Four Seasons.

“This investment will form part of our broader strategy on further investments in the Saudi Arabian high growth market,” the holding company’s CEO, Talal Ibrahim Almaiman, said at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh.

Eleven resorts are planned for Shura Island, which will also have residential properties, retail, dining and entertainment space, an 18-hole championship golf course and a 118-berth marina.

Red Sea Global is also developing a private island holiday destination, it announced on Tuesday. The Thuwal Private Retreat, located on a 1.7-hectare islet, is set to open next year and will be available for buy-out only.

The developer is a closed joint-stock company wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. (PIF also holds a 16.87 percent stake in Kingdom Holding Company.)

The Red Sea giga-project welcomed its first guests earlier this month. Two of its hotels are open for bookings and the Red Sea airport began operating in September.

When completed in 2030, the destination will have 50 resorts, with up to 8,000 hotel rooms and more than 1,000 residential properties spread across 22 islands and six inland sites.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy calls for tourism to contribute 10 percent of GDP by the end of the decade.

Tourism revenues grew from less than $1 billion in the first quarter of last year to more than $5 billion in the second quarter of 2023, according to Riyadh-based Jadwa Investment.

The original Vision 2030 target of 100 million visitors a year has been increased to 150 million.

Latest articles

Giorgia Meloni, Italy's prime minister, with Sultan Al Jaber, the minister of industry and chairman of Masdar, at the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week Summit, in Abu Dhabi

Masdar views Middle East as biggest growth market

UAE’s renewable energy company Masdar considers the Middle East its biggest market, even though its target is to grow globally, a senior executive has said. “The Middle East is the biggest market for us, we are a company from here, and this market is growing significantly,” Abdulaziz Alobaidli, chief executive officer of Masdar, told AGBI […]

Kenya's President William Ruto says the Kenya-UAE Cepa will 'more than triple' some food exports and provide investment opportunities

Kenya-UAE Cepa may increase food exports and investment

The UAE and Kenya have signed a comprehensive economic partnership agreement (Cepa) that is predicted to lead to a threefold increase in food exports from the East African nation.  The trade deal, which was agreed in February last year, is expected to accelerate trade and investment in agriculture, infrastructure, healthcare, travel and tourism, financial services and […]

Economic risks were the biggest concerns for business leaders and experts across the Middle East

Inflation, not war, is Gulf states’ top concern, says WEF

Economic concerns such as inflation dominate risk perception for the coming year in the Gulf and across Mena, according to the World Economic Forum. Its survey of thousands of experts and business leaders, the Global Risks Report 2025, found that geopolitical conflict was the No 1 risk globally, selected by respondents as the “most likely […]

Workers preparing for loading crude oil form ship to taker in Chonburi, Thailand

Adia to help fund $1bn Malaysian oil and gas firm

Abu Dhabi Investment Company (Adia) is to invest in an oil and gas equipment-making unit in Malaysia. Adia is participating in the $1 billion funding round for Yinson Holdings’ equipment-maker alongside Asian investment firm RRJ Capital and British Columbia Investment Management. The funding, expected to close in the first quarter of 2025, will primarily support […]