Red Sea luxury resort company to spend another $27 billion by 2030 – BNN Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) — A Saudi developer of luxury resort projects on the Red Sea coast expects to spend another $27 billion by 2030 to promote projects designed to attract more tourists to the kingdom.

According to CEO John Pagano, Red Sea Global Co. has already spent about that amount to complete a third of the Red Sea project, which includes 24 resorts expected to be fully operational by the end of 2025.

The rest of the funding will come from a mix of equity and debt, he said in an interview with Bloomberg at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh.

The Red Sea project, first announced in 2017, covers 28,000 square kilometers (11,000 square miles) – an area the size of Belgium – and is expected to eventually attract hundreds of thousands of luxury travelers a year.

The Red Sea coast includes an archipelago of 90 islands, and the government is building new resorts in the region as well as in the green mountains to the south near Yemen.

The project, wholly owned by the government’s $930 billion sovereign wealth fund, will provide about 14 billion riyals ($3.7 billion) in funding next year to support the construction of Amaala, a health resort with 29 hotels.

The PIF, as the fund is known, announced plans on Tuesday to increase its domestic investments, aiming to reduce global investments from 30% to 18% of its portfolio.

“We weren’t told to slow down,” Pagano said. According to him, 24 hotels will operate during the year.

The firm took out a loan of 14.1 billion riyals in 2021 to finance the construction of the first phase.

This development is key to Saudi Arabia’s plans to become a leading tourist destination. The kingdom aims to attract 150 million tourists a year by 2030 (up from 109 million last year) and plans to spend almost $1 trillion on the sector in the next decade.