Four Seasons opens its 130th property today on Shura Island in the Red Sea, the first hotel to receive guests at Saudi Arabia's flagship tourism megaproject. The resort is the anchor luxury property of The Red Sea Project, a $15 billion sovereign initiative spanning 28,000 square kilometres and 90 untouched islands. Reservations opened in January. The opening date has been the watch point for the entire ultra-luxury hospitality trade for two years.
We spent the week comparing the Four Seasons opening package against the four other Red Sea Project resorts already trading, the established Indian Ocean reference set (Aman, Soneva, Cheval Blanc), and what a new entrant needs to do to dislodge the Maldives' decade-long monopoly on hyper-exclusive atoll travel. Three things matter, and the order matters: the format, the architecture, and the residences.
The format is built for the Maldives buyer
Four Seasons Resort Red Sea opens with 149 guest rooms, suites, and overwater villas, alongside 31 branded private residences. The room count sits inside the narrow band the Indian Ocean reference set treats as the ceiling for ultra-luxury exclusivity. Cheval Blanc Randheli runs 45 villas. Soneva Jani trades 24. The Brando, in French Polynesia, has 35. Above roughly 150 keys, the experience starts reading as a resort rather than a private retreat, and Four Seasons has held the line.
Three pool venues, ten dining concepts, a Beach Club, a Kids for All Seasons program, and a 3,400-square-metre spa with a hammam, salt cave, ice plunge, and Watsu pool round the on-property programming. The spa footprint is unusual for an island property at this scale, and it tells you which guest the property is calibrated for: principal-tier, multi-generational, week-or-longer stays. Not the long-weekend Maldives flip.
Foster + Partners did the master plan, and it shows
The resort sits on Shura Island under the "Coral Bloom" master plan by Foster + Partners. The plan reads the island's existing coral and dune topography as the architectural brief, not the obstacle. The Four Seasons buildings are organised in clusters that follow the natural sandbar geometry, with the public spaces (Beach Club, dining pavilions, Spa) hugging the shore and the residences set back through dune planting. Material palette is timber, terracotta, woven shading, with the signature curved fan-shaped rooflines that have become the visual identifier of the entire Red Sea Project.
The architecture is the part the Maldives reference set cannot easily counter. Cheval Blanc Randheli, Soneva Jani, the One&Only Reethi Rah all trade variations on a single thatched-roof villa typology. Shura is reading as a destination with its own visual language. That matters for the cohort of buyers who have done the Maldives circuit and are looking for the next thing.
The 31 residences are the long game
Above roughly 150 keys, the experience starts reading as a resort rather than a private retreat, and Four Seasons has held the line.
Branded residences are the structural reason a sovereign tourism investor commits a property like this to a Four Seasons flag rather than building independently. The 31 private residences on Shura sell access to Four Seasons housekeeping, security, F&B, and concierge services in perpetuity. They trade as primary or secondary homes, not as keys in the hotel rotation. Pricing has not been disclosed publicly. For a reference, Four Seasons Private Residences at the Surf Club, Florida, traded recently at $7,000 to $9,000 per square foot for the larger units.
Two brokers we spoke with on background expect the residences to clear inside the first 18 months, with the largest contingent of buyers coming from the GCC and a smaller secondary contingent from London and Singapore. The play here is not the resort. The resort is the amenity stack that makes the residences worth what they cost.
What the Indian Ocean reference set does next
Aman opens AlUla next year, also in Saudi Arabia, in a desert setting rather than a marine one. Different product, same sovereign customer base. Cheval Blanc has not announced a Saudi or Red Sea property. Soneva is operating within the Maldives and Thailand and has not signalled a Red Sea entry. Rosewood is on the Red Sea Project via a separate signed agreement at Amaala (further north), opening dates not yet public.
Read the competitive map as a two-year delay between Four Seasons Shura and the rest of the luxury operator set establishing Red Sea positions. That delay is the window where Four Seasons books rate premium, the residences clear at opening pricing, and the property writes the visual reference for the destination. Shura is not the only Red Sea hotel. It is the first ultra-luxury Red Sea hotel, and right now, it is alone in its tier.
For principal-tier readers planning the next island week: the booking window for the resort opening run (now through year-end) is the right moment to lock rate and inventory. Residence enquiries route through Four Seasons Private Residences directly. For coverage of how the Coral Bloom architectural language continues into the next four Red Sea Project openings (Six Senses, St. Regis, Edition, Faena), the desk tracks each property's reservations system as it goes live. More in Destinations.
Images provided by Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.