Seven Tides to develop luxury resort on The World islands

The luxury property developer and holding company spent tens of millions of dollars buying 10 of the World Islands in the South America cluster, including Buenos Aires, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and Falkland.

Having recently completed its hotel and property development portfolio, including the recently opened Dukes Hotel on The Palm Jumeirah, the company has started to develop a luxury resort on one of the South American islands, closest to the Dubai shoreline, CEO Abdulla Bin Sulayem told Arabian Business.

Bin Sulayem revealed that he is planning to build a low-rise, 60 villa luxury resort, including a signature restaurant, all-day dining venue, spa and water activities.

“You will have the skyline of all of Dubai. One of the closest ones [to the shoreline],” Bin Sulayem said.

“It’s five minutes distance from the Jumeirah Marina Port and it’s less than 15 minutes from Anantara [The Palm Dubai] by boat. If you’re staying on the island and you want to go shopping, we can drop you to the closest point to Dubai Mall.”

Work has started and is expected to be completed in “less than a year”.

“We have built a few mock-ups and we’re studying with a potential hotel operator, and testing a few things to ensure that once we build it, it lasts a long time,” Bin Sulayem said.

The operator is expected to be announced at the upcoming Arabian Travel Market event in Dubai later this month.

While the timeline appears to be incredibly ambitious, he said planning for the project began three years ago. The long lead-in time allowed Seven Tides to test the new construction method that enabled the developer to erect one of the ‘mock-ups’ – a complete villa – in just three weeks.

Bin Sulayem was coy about the method of construction, or what it entails, and said all will be revealed later this year.

To get a sense of what they will be like, Bin Sulayem gave the example of the Maldives, which was the basis for his research and concept.

“I noticed from most successful hotels [in the Maldives], that they have built their landscape in a way that if you have your villa there, if it’s a beach villa or water villa, the moment you leave your balcony, you feel you’re the only person there,” he said.

“They’ve built the landscape to add as much privacy as they can. This is the key to the success of that hotel. So we need to be careful and really be successful with the landscape design, this is really important.”