On Tuesday 8 September, Red Sea Global announced that Nammos Resort Amaala had opened and welcomed its first guests on Saudi Arabia’s north-western coast. It is the first resort hotel anywhere for Nammos, the Greek brand best known for its beach club on Mykonos. A day earlier the developer had announced the opening of Equinox Resort Amaala, a hotel organised around fitness and recovery.
The two announcements close a crowded summer at Triple Bay, the first part of Amaala to receive guests. Six Senses Amaala welcomed its first guests in mid-July and Rosewood Amaala opened in August, while Hotel Designs reported in July that Four Seasons Resort and Residences Amaala had opened in June. Red Sea Global, known as RSG, described Nammos as the sixth resort to open at the destination and said three more would follow in the coming months.
For travellers in the Gulf, this is the season in which Saudi Arabia’s wellness coast moved from plans and renderings to rooms that can be booked. The coast is a short flight from several Gulf capitals, and Etihad is scheduled to add a direct service from Abu Dhabi on 4 October.
Where the mountains meet the reef
Amaala stretches across three natural bays on the north-western coast of Saudi Arabia, where the Hijaz Mountains come down to the Red Sea. Rosewood describes the same shore as the place where the Tabuk mountains meet the world’s fourth-largest barrier reef.
RSG, which is owned by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is developing Amaala alongside The Red Sea, its first destination, as part of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 programme to broaden the economy. When it announced Amaala’s opening programme in November 2025, RSG put its investment in the first phase at SAR 51.04bn. It also capped the destination at 500,000 visitors a year and said it would run entirely on renewable energy.
The first phase is planned as nine resorts with more than 1,600 hotel rooms between them, surrounded by branded residences, a marina, shops and restaurants. The theme throughout is wellness. John Pagano, RSG’s group chief executive, put it plainly at the November announcement: "Amaala is the new home for wellness in the world."
For Gulf residents the proposition is simple. Etihad, announcing its new route, pitched the coast as the kind of holiday people normally take a long-haul flight for. Amaala puts the same international hotel names a few hours from home.
The visitor cap sets the tone for what has opened so far. RSG describes Rosewood, for example, as a low-density resort whose rooms are grouped in clusters among gardens, and Rosewood says every one of them has its own pool.
A summer, resort by resort
The first guests arrived at the start of the summer. Hotel Designs reported that Four Seasons Resort and Residences Amaala opened in June 2026, with 202 sea-facing rooms, suites, villas and residences, views of the Hijaz Mountains and a spa called Hyliaa Wellness & Spa.
Six Senses followed. RSG announced on 9 July that Six Senses Amaala would welcome its first guests in the middle of the month, with 100 suites and villas and 25 branded residences. Its design draws on traditional Saudi coastal architecture, and a mangrove lagoon sits at its centre. The spa includes a Longevity Centre, a Biohacking Recovery Lounge, a sound dome and a Watsu pool, used for a form of massage performed while floating in warm water. There are three signature restaurants, an artisan bakery, a coffee roastery and a cooking school, and children can join programmes called Earth Lab and Junior Mangrove Ecologist. It is RSG’s second Six Senses, after Six Senses Southern Dunes at The Red Sea, which opened in 2023.
Rosewood Amaala opened on 19 August with 110 keys on about 40 hectares, plus 26 branded residences. RSG called it the third resort to open at Triple Bay. Every villa looks towards the sea from a sand-lined terrace. Its architecture is by the Milan studio Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel, and its spa teaches Sadu weaving and Arabic calligraphy as part of its treatments.
RSG’s announcements have not always counted the openings in the same way, so a running tally is less useful than the shape of the season. In a little over three months, Triple Bay has gained several of the resorts it was planned around, each with a different idea of what a wellness holiday should be.
Equinox: wellness as training
Equinox Resort Amaala, announced on 7 September, sits in the Marina Village at Triple Bay. It has 128 rooms and suites in six categories, including two penthouses, and 21 branded residences. Foster + Partners designed the buildings and Rockwell Group the interiors. Hotel Designs has described it as an adults-only resort and the brand’s first destination resort.
The heart of the hotel is the training floor: 704 square metres of indoor and outdoor space, which RSG describes as the largest fitness facility at Amaala. The 1,602-square-metre spa is built around the Equinox X Circuit, a seven-stage route of recovery treatments. It includes cryotherapy, which uses brief exposure to intense cold; an infrared sauna; hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in which guests breathe oxygen inside a pressurised chamber; hydrotherapy; and treatments that alternate heat and cold.
There are four outdoor pools: a lap pool, leisure pools and a rooftop pool of magnesium salt water that looks over Triple Bay, the marina and the Amaala Yacht Club. Four restaurants complete the picture: Mint + Co, Soho Souk, Sama Ai and EQX Den.
Pagano placed the hotel within the wider destination: "The opening of Equinox Resort Amaala introduces a distinctive new dimension to the destination’s wellness offering."
Nammos: from beach club to resort
Nammos Resort Amaala has 110 keys and 20 private residences, from one-bedroom apartments up to a three-bedroom penthouse, all managed by Nammos Hotels & Resorts, whose owners also have the use of the resort’s restaurants. It stands on the shore of Triple Bay, looking across the Red Sea and Dumega Bay. Foster + Partners designed it too, drawing on the character of the Cyclades and the coastal heritage of the region.
The brand’s signature has been carried over. The Nammos Beach Club sits on its own private island, reached by boardwalk or private jetty, and serves Mediterranean-inspired food. The Nammos Spa follows a programme the brand calls Boundless Wellbeing, which includes late-night sound healing and skin treatments. For families there is the Blu Kids Club.
Today is much more than the opening of a hotel. It is the beginning of an entirely new chapter for Nammos.
Carolyn Turnbull, CEO, Nammos Hotels & Resorts
Carolyn Turnbull, chief executive of Nammos Hotels & Resorts, used those words in the opening announcement. Pagano said the new resort "strengthens the diversity of experiences available across the destination".
Reef, marina and power
The hotels are only part of what RSG is building. The Corallium Marine Life Institute, set over three levels at Triple Bay, combines exhibits on Red Sea ecosystems with research, conservation and public education. The Amaala Yacht Club, which has a sailing academy, is due to host the Grand Finale of The Ocean Race, the round-the-world sailing race, in 2027.
Rosewood says its power comes from more than 406,000 solar panels paired with battery storage, which supply renewable energy day and night. Only electric vehicles move guests and goods around the destination, and pools are sanitised without chemicals. RSG has also set a target of a 30 per cent net conservation gain by 2040.
Under dark skies at The Red Sea
Amaala is RSG’s second destination. The first, The Red Sea, opened in 2023 and continues to grow. RSG also opened Thuwal Private Retreat, a separate project, in 2024. In September 2025 Shura Island soft-opened there with SLS, The Red Sea EDITION and InterContinental, under a Foster + Partners masterplan called Coral Bloom.
In August, DarkSky International, the organisation that works to protect the night sky from light pollution, launched a certification for resorts. It named two RSG properties at The Red Sea, Desert Rock and Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, as the first in the world to earn it. The guidelines were developed with RSG and set out how a large resort can light its paths and buildings without washing out the stars.
Getting there
When RSG announced Amaala’s opening programme in November 2025, Red Sea International Airport had direct flights from Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai and Doha, and RSG said a direct route from Europe was due to follow. It also said AlWajh Airport was scheduled to reopen in 2026 after renovation.
Abu Dhabi joins the map next month. Etihad announced on 8 September that it will fly from Abu Dhabi to Red Sea International from 4 October, once a week at first and twice a week from 25 October. The A320 on the route has eight Business seats and 150 in Economy, and the flight takes a little over three hours. The route makes the Red Sea Etihad’s sixth destination in Saudi Arabia, after Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Medina and Al Qassim, and passengers from across its network can connect in Abu Dhabi. Hotel Designs reported that Rosewood guests arrive by electric vehicle or by boat through the marina.
Schedules in the region have changed often this year, so travellers should confirm flights and current travel advice with their airline before they book.
What comes next
RSG says three more resorts will open at Amaala in the coming months, together with more branded residences, wellness facilities, marinas, shops and restaurants. Its November 2025 line-up for the first phase also named Clinique La Prairie Health Resort, Jayasom Wellness Resort and The Ritz-Carlton Resort.
The larger test is the one RSG set itself: whether a coast designed for no more than half a million visitors a year can keep its calm as it fills. For now, Triple Bay offers something new. For the Gulf traveller, it is a stretch of Saudi shoreline, a short flight from home, built around rest, recovery and the reef.
Sources: Red Sea Global (Nammos release), Red Sea Global (Equinox release), Red Sea Global (Amaala announcement), Hotel Designs, Etihad Airways, DarkSky International