Saudi Arabia’s Purple 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 Purple 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 challenge 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 cleared the path, together with two different unique accommodations: Six Senses Southern Dunes and Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve. These three are just the start, in keeping with Purple Sea International (RSG), which is growing the world. By 2030, greater than 50 accommodations — together with outposts of Version, Miraval, and Raffles — are anticipated to open, with a complete of greater than 8,000 rooms. 

The vacation spot may also characteristic leisure venues, spas, purchasing, a marina, and extra. Regardless of the scale and ambition of the challenge, officers say that customer arrivals shall be capped at 1 million a yr. One goal is to take care of a premium visitor expertise; one other is to assist defend — and even regenerate — the delicate Purple Sea ecosystem. To that finish, the builders insist that the challenge shall 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 accommodations and points of interest which can be welcoming guests now or shall be by the top of subsequent yr. Infrastructure akin to desalination crops, cooling methods, and water-treatment models may also run on solar energy. Seaplanes and helicopters, just like the one I traveled on, use sustainable aviation gasoline, whereas vehicles that service the accommodations run on biofuel created from used cooking oil sourced from inside Saudi Arabia.

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

Huge actual property tasks are definitely not uncommon within the Center East, and I harbored just a few considerations concerning the environmental impacts of Saudi Arabia’s formidable 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 beautiful biodiversity.”

Simply 1 p.c of the full space below RSG’s purview shall be developed. As an alternative, plans name for explicit 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 recent 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 puzzled what number of guests would discover these sustainability measures. Time will inform.

For now, the reefs are beautiful. On the final morning of my go to, I went snorkeling close to the resort. Purple Sea clown fish, lionfish, sea goldies, and different creatures I couldn’t title darted round lovely formations of coral in a large number 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 subject of Journey + Leisure below the headline “The Subsequent Frontier.”