Hyatt opened Grand Hyatt The Red Sea on November 2, a 430-room resort on Shura Island and the second Hyatt branded property in The Red Sea destination, following Miraval The Red Sea, which opened earlier this year. It is the group’s eighth hotel in Saudi Arabia, and on an island being built as the centrepiece of the kingdom’s Red Sea tourism project, it arrives at a scale intended to anchor the place: the island’s leading ballroom, nine dining venues, five pools, and rooms, suites and villas across 430 keys.
“The opening of Grand Hyatt The Red Sea is a significant milestone for Hyatt in the Kingdom,” said Stephen Ansell, Hyatt’s managing director for the Middle East and Africa, noting that it follows Miraval’s opening earlier this year.
Shura Island follows the Coral Bloom master planning concept created by Foster + Partners, and the resort takes its design language from the reef offshore. Its signature canopy structures are made using recycled fishing nets and inspired by reef forms, creating shade and a distinctive visual identity across the property. Interiors by Muza Lab work under the name The Reef Flower Garden, in a calming palette drawn from the surrounding landscape. Guest rooms carry private balconies or terraces overlooking the sea, the lagoon or the gardens, and selected accommodations add private pools.
Two restaurants now, seven to follow
The dining program is opening in stages, and early guests should plan around that. Two of the nine venues are open now: Embers, built around live-fire cooking of expertly prepared meats and fresh seafood, and the Drift Pool Bar, serving drinks and light bites beside the water. The remaining seven are set to open at a later stage, and the names sketch the island’s ambitions: The Amalfi Club, Café Maude French bistro, Havana Social, Charcoal Tandoor Fire Grill, El Ta’koy Hawaiian street food by chef Luis Pous, alongside Akira Back Korean BBQ and 2am, a dessert bar by pastry chef Janice Wong. Hyatt has published no dates for the later openings.
Wellness occupies a large footprint. Five pools span the property: three outdoors (Drift, Amalfi and the Main Pool) and two inside (a lap pool and a spa vitality pool). The Ethereal Spa covers 8,070 square feet, or 750 square metres, with 12 treatment rooms, ten indoors and two outdoors, featuring the VOYA brand, and the fitness centre adds 5,380 square feet. For events, five meeting rooms and a junior ballroom sit alongside the Grand Ballroom, recognised as the largest on Shura Island; the hotel lists more than 5,000 square metres of event space in total.
The destination around it
The Red Sea destination has been open since 2023 and now counts 17 resorts and around 3,000 hotel keys across more than 28,000 square kilometres of pristine islands, desert and mountains on Saudi Arabia’s west coast, developed by Red Sea Global. Red Sea International Airport connects it with regular flights from Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha, Milan and Dubai. The destination is powered by 100 percent renewable energy, with a target of a 30 percent net conservation gain by 2040.
It is also the second Grand Hyatt in the Kingdom, after Grand Hyatt Al Khobar, which opened in 2021, and the comparison shows how far the brand’s Saudi brief has travelled: from a business hotel in the Eastern Province to the flagship resort of a destination being built from empty coastline. On Shura, Grand Hyatt is the scale play. The island’s other early addresses, including Miraval’s wellness resort, compete on specialism; at 430 keys with the island’s largest ballroom and more than 5,000 square metres of event space, this is the property designed to host the destination’s groups, celebrations and full-resort buyouts as they arrive.
With Miraval already open on the same island, Hyatt now operates two of Shura’s earliest resorts, one selling wellness specialism and this one selling scale, a useful hedge in a destination whose visitor mix is still being discovered.
To celebrate the opening, World of Hyatt members who book the New Hotel Member Bonus Offer rate earn two times the points for every full dollar spent on the room rate and eligible incidental charges. Bookings are open through Hyatt’s own channels. Travellers weighing an early stay should weigh the phased dining opening as part of the bargain: the resort itself is complete, its restaurant row is not, yet.
Photography: Hyatt
