Saudi Arabia’s Pink Sea Resort Area Goals to Be the World’s Greenest Escape — This is How

As my helicopter hovered above the seemingly infinite blue sea and the overwater villas on the St. Regis Pink Sea Resort, the comparability to the Maldives was inescapable. 

However this was no Indian Ocean idyll. As an alternative, this 90-villa resort is a part of Saudi Arabia’s mission that can flip 11,000 sq. miles of its western coast into what it hopes will turn into a prime vacation spot for luxurious tourism. Backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund, it’s simply certainly one of a number of futuristic tourism ventures being developed within the kingdom. 

The St. Regis helps prepared the ground, together with two different unique lodges: Six Senses Southern Dunes and Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve. These three are just the start, in keeping with Pink Sea International (RSG), which is creating the realm. By 2030, greater than 50 lodges — together with outposts of Version, Miraval, and Raffles — are anticipated to open, with a complete of greater than 8,000 rooms. 

The vacation spot can even function leisure venues, spas, purchasing, a marina, and extra. Regardless of the scale and ambition of the mission, officers say that customer arrivals will probably be capped at 1 million a 12 months. One purpose is to keep up a premium visitor expertise; one other is to assist defend — and even regenerate — the delicate Pink Sea ecosystem. To that finish, the builders insist that the mission will probably be run on renewable power and operated sustainably.

Early inexperienced initiatives embody the set up of photo voltaic panels — sufficient to cowl an space equal to 1,900 soccer fields — to energy the set of 16 lodges and sights which are welcoming guests now or will probably be by the tip of subsequent 12 months. Infrastructure resembling desalination crops, cooling programs, and water-treatment items can even run on solar energy. Seaplanes and helicopters, just like the one I traveled on, use sustainable aviation gasoline, whereas vans that service the lodges run on biofuel constructed from used cooking oil sourced from inside Saudi Arabia.

Then there’s the brand new Pink Sea Worldwide Airport, the gateway to the area, a two-hour flight from Riyadh. When its fundamental terminal debuts in 2025, the airport will showcase cutting-edge expertise that features a luggage-delivery system that can transfer baggage from plane to resort with out vacationers’ intervention. Company, in the meantime, can catch a trip in one of many many Lucid electrical automobiles that can present transfers.

Large actual property tasks are actually not uncommon within the Center East, and I harbored a couple of considerations in regards to the environmental impacts of Saudi Arabia’s bold plans. “We perceive the skepticism,” says Sultan Moraished, an RSG govt. “Earlier than a shovel hit the bottom, we despatched in scientists to catalogue and assess the gorgeous biodiversity.”

Simply 1 p.c of the overall space beneath RSG’s purview will probably be developed. As an alternative, plans name for specific care to be given to enhancing the area’s biologically various habitats. That work consists of organising a lab to develop coral for the creation of latest reefs and, by 2030, planting greater than 50 million mangroves, plus 30 million saplings and shrubs, to enhance inexperienced cowl and cut back erosion.

Nonetheless, from my perch on the St. Regis, I questioned what number of guests would discover these sustainability measures. Time will inform.

For now, the reefs are gorgeous. On the final morning of my go to, I went snorkeling close to the resort. Pink Sea clown fish, lionfish, sea goldies, and different creatures I couldn’t identify darted round lovely formations of coral in a mess of colours and shapes. The scene jogged my memory of one thing Moraished had stated: “We don’t declare to have all of the solutions, however we’re steadfast in our dedication.”

A model of this story first appeared within the October 2024 difficulty of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “The Subsequent Frontier.”