(Bloomberg) -- The Saudi developer of luxury resort projects on the Red Sea coast expects to spend another $27 billion by 2030 to push ahead with developments that are designed to draw more tourists to the kingdom.
Red Sea Global Co. has already spent around that amount to complete a third of the Red Sea project, which includes 24 resorts that are expected to be fully operational by the end of 2025, according to Chief Executive Officer John Pagano.
The rest of the funding will come from a combination 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 about the size of Belgium — and is expected to eventually bring in hundreds of thousands of luxury travellers 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 on the green mountains in the south near Yemen.
The project, fully owned by the state’s $930 billion sovereign wealth fund, is securing about 14 billion riyals ($3.7 billion) in financing next year to support the construction of Amaala, a wellness-focused destination featuring 29 hotels.
The PIF, as the fund is known, announced plans on Tuesday to increase its domestic investments, aiming to reduce its global investments from 30% to 18% of its portfolio.
“We weren’t told to slowdown,” said Pagano. Within a year, there will be 24 hotels operating, he said.
The firm had borrowed 14.1 billion riyals in 2021 to help fund construction for the first phase.
The development is key to Saudi Arabia’s plans to transform itself into a top tourism destination. The kingdom aims to draw in 150 million tourists a year by 2030 — from about 109 million last year — and plans to spend almost $1 trillion on the sector in the next decade.
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