Saudi Arabia Unveils Sindalah Island: First Luxury Tourism Spot on the Red Sea

Saudi Arabia Unveils Sindalah Island: NEOM’s first physical showcase opened yesterday, a luxury Red Sea island with restaurants, hotels and yachting berths. The island, called Sindalah, opens as doubts about NEOM’s viability persist and ahead of the big investor forum known as “Davos in the Desert” which starts in Riyadh on Tuesday.

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Sindalah island covers about 840,000 square metres and is 5km off the Red Sea coast in the Tabuk Province. It will have several luxury hotels, including Four Seasons, The Luxury Collection and Saudi Arabia’s first Autograph Collection Resort from Marriott International. When complete it will have 440 rooms and 88 luxury villas and 218 luxury serviced apartments.

As NEOM’s gateway to the Red Sea, the marina destination will also have offshore buoys for superyachts. 17 hours from some of the Mediterranean’s main yachting hubs, Sindalah is designed to attract yacht owners from Europe, Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East.

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NEOM is best known for The Line, twin mirror-encased 170km long skyscrapers that will stretch inland from the coast. When The Line was unveiled in 2022, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said it would have a population of over one million by 2030 and nine million by 2045. But Bloomberg reported earlier this year that under revised projections only 300,000 will be living in The Line by the end of the decade and only 2.4km of the project will be completed by then.

NEOM is being built alongside other mega projects launched as part of Vision 2030, Prince Mohammed’s plan to position the world’s biggest oil exporter for a post-oil future.

Last year the Gulf country was the only bidder to host the 2034 World Cup so it now has 10 years to build the stadiums and increase its lodging and transport capacity. In December Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said officials had decided to delay some of the big projects past 2030 but didn’t say which ones.

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