Along Saudi Arabia’s western shore, Red Sea Global is establishing a brand-new luxury regenerative tourism destination.
The Red Sea covers more than 28,000 square kilometres and features the fourth-largest barrier reef system in the world, more than 90 uninhabited islands, beautiful beaches, dormant volcanoes, wide sand dunes, mountain canyons, and historical cultural monuments. The Red Sea will be ready to welcome the first guests this year. By 2030 it will be home to 50 hotels, 8,000 rooms, up to 1,000 residential properties and its own international airport.
We speak to John Pagano, CEO of Red Sea Global, about the journey so far, and the project’s emphasis on regeneration and sustainability.
Pagano last spoke to blooloop in 2020. Bringing us up to speed on the last three years, he says:
“We’ve been extraordinarily busy since then! We’re going to be opening our first three resorts soon – we’re literally in the process now of handing over Six Senses [Southern Dunes]. Then, later in the summer, we’ll be handing over Saint Regis and Ritz Carlton Reserve to the operators to start their training and soft opening.”
Progress update from The Red Sea
That’s fairly remarkable given what has happened since our last interview; namely, the global pandemic and the subsequent upheaval.
“None of us could have imagined that type of an event. But we were lucky, to a large extent, because of where we were in the construction development cycle. We were in the infrastructure phase, so all of that work was outdoors. And because we were in a remote area, we were able to isolate ourselves from the rest of the Kingdom.
“We took extraordinary measures to safeguard our employees and our contractors. To everybody’s credit, we had no major outbreaks of COVID during that period. Subsequent to that, we came out of COVID and dealt with the post-COVID supply chain disruptions. We managed to keep the train moving in the right direction. That leads us to where we are now, on the verge of opening our first three resorts.”
Pagano credits that progress during a challenging period to the team:
“We have a highly motivated, highly dedicated team. And we are creating a vertically integrated real estate company. We do everything in-house, from the ideation to site analysis and master planning design, and then procurement, construction and operation.”
See also: Everything you need to know about Saudi Arabia’s giga-projects
First hotels about to open
The first phase of The Red Sea features 16 hotels in total. Three are going to open this year, and the remaining 13 will open at the end of next year. The company has also created all of the enabling infrastructure, as Pagano explains:
“We built over 120km of roads, and we’ve contracted and now are bringing online the utilities that will, power and provide all of the servicing to the destination. That was a large-scale public-private partnership or design-build-operate transfer agreement with a third party.”
The Six Senses Southern Dunes Resort is already operating with 100% renewable energy.
“The main facilities for the balance of the first phase are now starting to come on stream. The first 45 – 50 megawatts of power is being switched on by that particular operator. It’s all powered by renewable energy 24 hours a day. That’s a major milestone for us.”
The company has also built the new Red Sea International Airport, which is home to the first seaplane runway in the Kingdom, and created its own seaplane business.
“The destination is coming to life,” says Pagano.
As it matures, Red Sea Global is also creating new businesses. It has formed an adventure company, Akun, and a water sports company, WAMA. It also has a diving company called Galaxea.
“We’re trying to curate the best experiences for our guests, to the highest standards with safety and sustainability embedded in everything that we do. We’re making solid progress towards really opening up Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world.”
The Red Sea and Amala
At the start, Red Sea Global was only focused on The Red Sea project. Subsequently, however, the firm was also asked to take on Amala. This is a sister project a couple of hundred kilometres to the north of the Red Sea.
“Amala is another tourism destination with a slightly different focus. The Red Sea is an eco-tourism project, built around nature and the environment. Amala has the same emphasis, insofar as sustainability and regeneration are concerned. But its key focus is going to be on the wellness industry. Pre-COVID, this was a rapidly growing segment of the travel industry. Now, post-COVID, it is even bigger because people have become much more aware of the benefits of health.”
At Amala, there are currently eight resorts under construction. It also includes a marine life institute, with a coral research facility.
“That has a scientific angle to it, of course, but also a guest experience angle. Guests will be able to participate with researchers in studying the unique characteristics of our coral reefs in the Red Sea. These are unique around the world. They seem to have resilience and tolerance to some of the stressors that would otherwise damage them.
“We’re devoting a fair amount of energy to learning more about them. What is it about the Red Sea corals that make them so resilient to higher levels of heat? Maybe there are lessons that we can share with the rest of the world, to offer hope of recovering and restoring our reefs in the Indian Ocean, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Caribbean reefs.”
Embedding sustainability from the start
Sustainability was built into The Red Sea right from the start. Pagano has previously talked about how his team is pioneering new standards in regenerative development.
“One of my favourite sayings is that we’re inspired by nature, but we’re led by science. We came to the conclusion very early on that sustainability is no longer enough. Sustainability is by definition maintaining the status quo, and that’s great to a point. But we’re past the point of just maintaining the status quo. The world is on a terrible trajectory. As humanity, we need to start doing things that actually seek to undo the damage.”
“Regeneration, the way we see it, is to make the place better than the way you found it. That’s a pretty bold statement to make. But we started from the very beginning with a different approach. We didn’t start with, okay, where are we going to build and how are we going to build it? We actually spent the first year or more just understanding the baseline.
“To start with, we did a baseline survey of everything around us, this environment that we are working in. We knew it was special, and we wanted to quantify it. So, we worked with our scientific partner, King Abdullah, University of Science and Technology (KAUST). They provided a lot of scientific input.”
Careful planning for The Red Sea
This work included the production of a marine spatial planning simulation. The lagoon that forms the body of The Red Sea site holds around 2500 square kilometres of water. It is home to the fourth-largest barrier reef in the world.
“It’s designated a critical habitat in accordance with the United Nations, which means that it’s all linked. Something happening in one part of the lagoon would affect other parts of the lagoon.”
“We divided it up into squares and assigned conservation values to each and every one of them. Then, when we looked to plan the destination, we iterated through the simulation exercise. Instead of setting the goal of maintaining the conservation value of the destination, we actually set ourselves a target of increasing the conservation value by 30%.”
The team then moved the parts around until they found a solution on the best way to build the resort in terms of impact, access, and guest experience.
Setting aside protected areas
As part of this work, Red Sea Global was able to make informed decisions about which islands to develop.
“There is a beautiful island in the southern part of the lagoon, Al-Waqidi. It’s surrounded by corals. There’s a white sandy beach, and it has the perfect orientation so you get both sunrises and sunsets. So we thought, fantastic, what a great island to develop. But through the course of our scientific work, we discovered that this particular island was a favoured nesting site for the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle.”
As a result, the team chose not to develop that island.
“We set it aside. We’ve made that an area where we can bring guests under very strict conditions to actually experience the wonders of the turtles hatching. It’s come to symbolise our commitment to sustainability and regeneration. The turtles were there first, so why should we expropriate them? That really guides the way we do things.”
Accountability
Pagano concedes that some people may be sceptical of Red Sea Global’s commitment to sustainability. However, the team aims to be as transparent as possible.
“It’s easy for us to say what we say, but we also do a lot of survey work. We’ve undertaken one of the largest surveys of the entire marine ecosystem, including fish quantities, bird populations, etcetera., and we published it.”
“We’re putting ourselves out into the wider world and saying, ‘Okay, this is where we’re starting from.’
“Our aim is to increase conservation value by 30% over the coming decades, so this is our report card. Every year we will issue our sustainability report and measure our progress against our commitments in the environmental space, as well as the social space and governance.
“We’re absolutely committed and we’re going to be doing it on a transparent basis. So, we will report success and we will also report where we have fallen short.”
Mangrove regeneration
The company is certainly pushing boundaries. To illustrate this, Pagano gives another example, looking at the area’s mangrove forests.
“Mangroves are amazing. They do so much for us; they protect us against sea level rise, and they protect the islands from erosion. In fact, that’s how the islands were originally formed, through the mangroves taking root.”
“But the other added feature of the mangroves is that they’re amazing at sequestering carbon, to a factor of maybe five or ten times more than an equivalent area of trees on land. They also create amazing habitats.
“We’ve committed ourselves to planting 50 million new mangrove trees. By the end of this year, our first million will have taken hold. Then we’re going to transplant them in different locations. We created a mangrove farm on the coast.”
Corals at The Red Sea
Red Sea Global is also growing corals:
“We know we’re blessed with thriving coral reefs. But coral reefs generally are under severe threat. They’re disappearing at a phenomenal rate through a combination of global warming, pollution, and the acidification of the oceans.
“So, not to be complacent, we’re growing corals in the laboratory. We’re working with various NGOs and other scientific organisations to help us enhance the natural reproductive cycle so that we get more success in that process, to build resilience, to build abundance.”
“We’ve innovated floating coral farms. These are having an upwards of 95% success rate in getting corals to survive and grow.”
In addition, Red Sea Global has built the biggest landscape nursery in the region, at 1 million square metres.
“We’ve got currently something like 4 million trees, plants and shrubs. We collect seeds and we propagate, so we’re trying to grow as many endemic species as we can.”
An off-grid tourist destination
The Red Sea will be the largest tourism destination in the world that is completely off-grid.
“We have no connection to the power distribution system here in the Kingdom. We are generating our power solely by the sun. At night we use batteries, and we’re building the largest battery storage system in the world, at 1.2GW hours or 1200 megawatt hours of storage capacity.”
“We did that because we wanted to demonstrate to the world that there is a better way, that the technology exists. You just have to have the will to do it. You have to pay a little bit more. But what price do you put on the future of your children, your grandchildren?
“There’s far too much talk – everybody talks about the things we need to do, yet there is very little action. We wanted to change the narrative and let the actions speak for themselves. If we do it and we’re successful, which we will be, others will have to follow, either through peer pressure, which is very compelling because the consumers are king when it comes to where they choose to spend their money, or because ultimately more adoption and competition will bring the costs down.”
Net zero at The Red Sea
Red Sea Global has also committed itself to being net zero in its operations.
“We have a fleet of electric vehicles. But unlike electric vehicles elsewhere, the power that goes into those electric vehicles is green, it’s renewable energy.
“We’re working on becoming a centre of excellence and focus on hydrogen as a fuel source. We’re experimenting with hydrogen vehicles, buses, trucks and marine vessels. The industry’s not quite there yet. Hydrogen hasn’t gotten the same attention so far. I think Toyota is the interesting outlier in that space where they’re actually banking more on hydrogen. They’ve just launched four new models.”
“We actually signed an MOU with a company called Zeroavia in the UK. That firm is working on a hydrogen fuel cell-powered plane. We want to adapt one of our planes and put in a hydrogen fuel cell-powered motor. Hopefully, we’ll get that flying and start that transition. On the aviation front, we’re also bringing sustainable aviation fuel into the Kingdom, which reduces emissions.”
Greener construction
When it comes to construction, the team have embedded new green solutions here too.
“Green concrete is something that that everybody should be looking at. Cement is a big generator of greenhouse gas emissions. So, if you make concrete with less cement, you start to reduce the carbon footprint of its production. That’s a big part of what we’re doing.”
“Also, offsite manufacturing has afforded us the opportunity to produce a lot of our building components offsite. In some cases, the complete villa or hotel room is produced in a factory. The stainless steel orbs, which you may have seen some of our coverage on, are actually being manufactured in the UAE. They come to the site and are basically lifted off a barge and put onto their foundations.
“To do that on-site, you’d need ten times more construction workers to do it. By producing it offsite, we minimise the number of workers on the site, thereby reducing our footprint.
Dark Skies at The Red Sea
The Red Sea intends to become the largest certified Dark Sky Reserve in the world
“Dark skies is something that, as city dwellers, we’ve long since lost. You don’t see the night sky anymore in the city.”
“The thing that strikes you when you come to the destination is how dark it really is. And it’s hugely important for life; we’ve got lots of nocturnal species that need the night light. The turtles get confused by light, for example.
“It’s important that we protect this precious nocturnal environment for the people and the inhabitants that were there before us, but also for our guests. Imagine being in a villa in the desert or on the islands with an amazing kaleidoscope of stars that you just don’t appreciate when you live in London or in Riyadh because there’s just so much light pollution.
“We want to preserve the natural environment as much as possible and wherever possible. And the night sky is no different.”
Social regeneration
The Red Sea and Amala will create up to 120,000 jobs.
“Part of Vision 2030 is creating new jobs and helping to diversify the economy. The two projects will both play their part. We’re working hard to create training opportunities, in order to create the new skills that the industry currently doesn’t have.
“This is a nascent industry here in the kingdom. They do a fair amount of religious tourism. But this is slightly different. The projection is that upwards of 1.2 million new jobs in the tourism space need to be created between now and 2030. We’re about 10% of that.”
“Upskilling young Saudis is a big part of that. We have a number of different programs that we’ve been rolling out. We have 170 scholarship students that we sponsored to study international hospitality management at the University of Prince Mehran in Medina. That course is jointly accredited with École Hoteliere de Lausanne, which is one of the most famous hospitality schools in the world.
“We also have vocational training programs. We work very closely with the Human Resources Development Fund, which is part of the Ministry of Human Resources. We’re taking people through vocational training in hospitality, renewable energy, engineering, security services and in airport operations. So we’re providing the vocational skills to better equip the population to be able to take the jobs that the new economy is going to generate.”
Saudi Arabia opens up
On the opening up of Saudi Arabia to international tourists, Pagano says:
“It has a very warm population, and it’s just an amazing place. More and more people are going to come to discover that as we open our doors to visitors from around the world. Many people think of Saudi Arabia, and they just think of the desert. But this place has got so much more to offer. It’s got history, it’s got culture, it’s got amazing nature. It’s such an interesting and dynamic place.”
In order to help welcome more visitors to the region, Red Sea Global has, as mentioned, created its own airport. Pagano says this offers an airport experience like no other.
“We designed this airport to be literally an extension of the destination, so its design is very distinct and unique. We’ve designed it to minimize energy consumption too. If you come to the airport, it’s not like going to Heathrow or to any other major airport. I describe it as a private aviation experience or a business class type experience.
“The scale of the airport is designed for the maximum population. That is a million visitors a year, capped by our ecological ceiling. But it’s divided up into five different pods so that it’s much more intimate. You don’t get the big cavernous arrivals halls – you de-plane, you go down escalators, and then you’re in our gardens, so you’re greeted by nature, right as you arrive.
“You walk through immigration and then you’re in the welcome centre, you’re greeted, and you get into an electric vehicle that’s waiting for you and they whisk you to your destination. We are trying to take the pain points away from travel. You don’t even have to pick up your luggage. Our smart destination systems take care of that.”
Different experiences on offer at The Red Sea
Pagano and his team have set out to create an integrated tourism destination, where guests can enjoy a variety of different experiences.
“We have amazing islands and beaches, but that becomes fairly one-dimensional. What we wanted to be able to offer our guests was multiple experiences. Today, luxury travel is not about accommodation as much as it is about experiences. And so we wanted to offer our guests the opportunity to have several different experiences on one trip, if that’s what they desire.
“So you could spend time on a small island, a big island. You could spend a night in the desert at Southern Dunes. Or you could go and spend several nights in a mountain resort.”
For instance, visitors can stay at Desert Rock, which is set in a hidden valley:
“We found this amazing mountain within the Red Sea area. We conceived of a resort that had units inside the rock, some units that were built within crevices and then others that we scattered around the mountains so that they all had privacy and spectacular night skies.
“It’s a remarkable resort. The cave units are 300m above sea level, give or take. So they have these amazing views. It’s so unique; there’s no other place like it.”
Tourism as a force for good
The Red Sea promises to be an unforgettable destination:
“Nothing that we’ve done, so far at least, is conventional. I can’t wait to open it up to the rest of the world. All of the designs are one of a kind. I think it’s going to be a truly amazing place to come and visit, and you’ll come back time and again because there are so many different options available.”
In conclusion, coming back to sustainability and the unique proposition of The Red Sea, Pagano says:
“Everybody, including the big corporates, is now being forced into ESG principles. It’s becoming important from an investor point of view, and certainly from a consumer point of view. So the question is not should I respond to this challenge, but how? And we decided to be different.
“We wanted to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the pack. We were fortunate in that this isn’t a purely commercial project that is all driven by the bottom line. This is a transformational project for the Kingdom. It’s part of a much bigger project of Vision 2030, so we were afforded the opportunities that others don’t necessarily get.”
“Instead of just simply taking advantage of that and doing whatever we want, we thought, ‘Wow, we have a platform here where we can actually lead the world in a transition towards regenerative development. The whole sustainability regeneration ethos is part of our DNA, and it permeates the entire organization. Everybody buys into it.
“More surveys are demonstrating that people want to travel more responsibly and more sustainably. Our success will put pressure on others. If there’s a choice and people want to choose to go somewhere sustainable, they’re going to come to us. So through that process, we hope that others are going to follow our lead.
“Our goal is to lead that transition towards a new way of doing things and to show that tourism actually can be a force for good.”
