Regenerating the environment: How the Red Sea Development Company leads the way for luxury travel destinations

Regenerating the environment: How the Red Sea Development Company leads the way for luxury travel destinations

Businesses do well when they combine different trends: a growing interest in luxury travel, plus Saudi Arabia as a destination and sustainability have been woven together by The Red Sea Development Company. The company is built around nature and culture, and sets new standards for sustainable development to put Saudi Arabia on the global tourism map. The company’s ambition is to go beyond sustainability to address the unfolding ecological and climate crisis and undo some of the damage that has already been caused. With the first guests set to arrive in the region by the end of this year, John Pagano, Group CEO at The Red Sea Development Company and AMAALA, explains what he calls “a regenerative development approach”: "Sustainability is about not making a mess of the place. It's standing still, whereas regeneration is trying to make the place better. Rather than starting our designs and our construction immediately, we brought in the scientists to work alongside us. We started to think about what it is we were going to develop. And we partnered with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the foremost leaders in studying and understanding the Red Sea.” This partnership led to the largest