The Best Hotels Near Waves Hotel, by the Record
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The villas here aren't built near the Hijaz mountains, they're carved into them, with suites set into cliff faces and ridgeline perches overlooking open desert. Floor-to-ceiling glass keeps the landscape inside the room whether you want it or not. A spa and stargazing terraces round out a place that takes "remote" as a design philosophy rather than an inconvenience. The Michelin Guide awarded it two Keys.
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Foster + Partners shaped the buildings here to mirror the dunes themselves, low and curved, so the resort seems to rise out of the desert rather than land on it. Six Senses Southern Dunes is a remote luxury resort on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, running on solar power with its own water plant. Private pool villas open onto unbroken desert, the spa fills two floors with hammam and hydrotherapy, and the cooking school leans into regional flavors.
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Mirrored spheres floating above the Red Sea are the opening argument: this is an ultra-luxury private-island resort where the architecture does most of the talking before you've unpacked. Curved, self-contained villas come with infinity pools that blur into open water, and the reef diving is as undisturbed as you'd hope for somewhere this remote. The pace stays unhurried even when you're e-foiling. The Michelin Guide awarded it two Keys.
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Guestrooms at this Red Sea resort are built to feel like freestanding beach houses, with wide terraces and windows scaled to make the coral-studded water the main piece of furniture. An electric vehicle fetries you across desert before Shura Island appears. The lobby's tea service quietly becomes a cocktail hour, the beach club runs Indonesian food with DJs, and the spa pulls frankincense and sea salt from nearby. The reef starts at the private beach.
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You arrive by chartered speedboat or seaplane, which is the resort's way of reminding you that you're on a private island in the Red Sea before you've even unpacked. The 90 villas, some overwater and some opening straight onto the beach, lean into barefoot seclusion while architect Kengo Kuma's design pulls in the region's textures so the whole thing feels native rather than dropped here. A Forbes Four Star property, it holds three dining venues and a spa with outdoor treatment rooms.
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Solar-powered villas float across a Red Sea archipelago so remote that the reef below is barely on the map. Nujuma is the Ritz-Carlton Reserve's first outpost in the Middle East, a design-forward resort where personal hosts handle the effortless parts so you can spend your attention on diving, sailing, stargazing, and guided walks with resident naturalists. The Michelin Guide awarded it two Keys.