Atlantis and One&Only are coming to Jeddah Central, Saudi Arabia’s first.

• A SAR 7.6bn JV between Midad, JCDC and Kerzner, signed November 2025 at the TOURISE summit.
• Atlantis Jeddah and One&Only Jeddah on the Jeddah Central waterfront.
• The first Atlantis and the first One&Only in Saudi Arabia.
• Both include branded residences and a private homes offering.

The partnership will deliver Atlantis Jeddah on the waterfront as part of the wider Jeddah Central regeneration, introducing the Atlantis brand to Saudi Arabia for the first time. As reported, the resort is planned at around 800 rooms and suites, with the region’s first Aquaventure Waterpark, a Lost Chambers Aquarium, more than 20 dining and lounge venues, retail and a waterfront entertainment pier, alongside a collection of branded private residences integrated into the development.

The point of that scale is activation. Atlantis is designed to combine resort energy with full-service residential living, positioning the address around lifestyle rather than a conventional hospitality asset. It drives footfall, visibility and a sense of place that supports both owner occupancy and long-term desirability.

Read alongside the wider Jeddah Central masterplan, the resort is not a standalone hospitality bet. It is the activation engine for the residences attached to it, the reason an integrated branded residence on this waterfront carries a different demand profile from an unbranded apartment in the same city.

Alongside Atlantis, the joint venture will deliver One&Only Jeddah, a more discreet counterpart within the same waterfront district. The project will include guest rooms, suites and villas, complemented by the brand’s first Private Homes community in Saudi Arabia. As reported, it is planned with seven specialty dining venues, a Club One wellness offering that includes padel and pickleball, and private beach access.

One&Only Jeddah is positioned to appeal to a different buyer profile. Where Atlantis is outward-facing and destination-led, One&Only is inward-facing and residential in character. With One&Only the emphasis is on low-density living, privacy and service, a tightly controlled environment built around long-term ownership.

Pairing the two within one waterfront district is the strategic point. The same joint venture covers the family-led resort and the quiet, service-led enclave, which lets Jeddah Central reach two distinct pools of capital from a single masterplan without either brand pulling the other off-positioning.

In a market like Saudi Arabia, the residential layer is where the long-term story is won.

Hotels announce ambition. Residences convert that ambition into ownership, community and enduring value. Branded residences do something specific: they make a new market easier to buy. In our reading they are among the faster-moving parts of the prime market across the region, though that is Omnia’s view rather than a measured market-share figure.

We have had comparable experiences in other Gulf markets, such as Oman, where branded residences give international purchasers a reference point for quality and service. They lower perceived execution risk. They create a lifestyle promise that extends beyond the unit itself. And they tend to attract a buyer who is comfortable allocating earlier in a cycle, because the brand acts as a trust mechanism.

Jeddah right now offers an increasing share of demand that is not yield-first. It is positioning-first.

It is hard to overstate how quickly the narrative around Jeddah has firmed up.

The Atlantis and One&Only signing was part of a JCDC hotel-signing wave in November 2025 that also brought Mandarin Oriental, a 220-room Canopy by Hilton with 120 serviced apartments, and Jareed to Jeddah Central. Beyond JCDC, the wider Jeddah branded cluster is real: Dar Global’s Trump Tower Jeddah on the Corniche, and its USD 1 billion Trump Plaza Jeddah, launched on 12 January 2026 inside the 1,000,000 square metre Amaya development on King Abdulaziz Road.

International interest is built as much by repetition as by any single announcement. When the market sees multiple global brands choosing the same city in the same window, it stops feeling experimental and starts feeling inevitable. That is why the Atlantis and One&Only move lands so cleanly. It does not need to create the story on its own. It reinforces one that is already building momentum.

Jeddah Central is not simply a collection of buildings. It is a roughly USD 20 billion PIF giga-project, announced in December 2021 and chaired by the Crown Prince, designed as a globally legible waterfront destination aligned with Vision 2030’s push to expand tourism. The masterplan runs to a 9.5km waterfront and a 2.1km public beach, with about 17,000 homes and 2,700 hotel rooms across three phases. Phase 1, roughly 45% of the development and including the Opera House, Stadium and Oceanarium, is due by the end of 2027, with construction already underway.

The most important part of that for real estate is the shift from city development to destination development. Destination development is designed to be sold to non-residents. It is designed to be visited, shared and understood quickly by people who do not live there. That is why branded hospitality and branded residences are central to it: they translate the destination into something global buyers recognise.

In that context, Atlantis and One&Only are not decorative. They are functional. They help Jeddah Central compete for international attention and, more importantly, international wallets.

From firsthand experience, three cohorts stand out.

• Prime coastal buyers. Those seeking prime coastal living in a market they believe is early in its pricing evolution.
• Strategic capital. Those allocating into state-backed regeneration zones because the infrastructure trajectory is visible and long-dated.
• End users and second-home buyers. Those who want Saudi exposure but require a globally familiar operating environment.

That last point is where branded residences have real power. They reduce friction. They make a purchase feel safer. They remove some of the uncertainty that otherwise slows international decision-making.

It is also why a large segment of the buyer base is not approaching Jeddah as a short-duration trade. Many are allocating for growth, not income, and branded assets give them confidence to do that earlier.

Jeddah’s advantages are obvious once you stop viewing it through a purely domestic lens. It is coastal. It has a strong cultural identity. It has natural lifestyle appeal. It is a gateway city, and the Jeddah Central waterfront sits about 30 minutes from Jeddah International Airport.

Atlantis is engineered for destination-scale appeal. It creates footfall, activity and a sense of place. That has a direct impact on the livability and marketability of any surrounding residential stock.

One&Only does the opposite in the best way. It creates quiet scarcity. It attracts a buyer who values privacy, service and a low-density setting. In residential terms, that tends to support higher-conviction purchasing and stronger long-term defensibility for prime assets.

Together, they give Jeddah Central breadth. A district that offers both high-energy resort living and very private living can address a wider spectrum of demand without diluting positioning.

Set these two against the wider backdrop of globally recognised names already committing to the city, including Four Seasons Private Residences Jeddah at the Corniche, another Midad project of four towers, a roughly 247-room hotel and 64 residences opening around 2027, and the Dar Global Trump Tower and Trump Plaza developments, and we are watching in real time a market that is attracting and keeping heavyweight talent.

One thing to be clear about: no prices, yields or residence unit counts for the Atlantis or One&Only residences have been released publicly at this stage. The numbers that are confirmed are the deal value, the brands, the location and the broad product shape. Anyone quoting a per-unit price or a target yield for these residences today is working from assumption, not a published figure, and we will not do that here. When pricing and the residence mix are released, that is the point at which the buying case can be modelled properly.

The headline is not that Jeddah is getting new hotels. The headline is that Jeddah Central is being underwritten as a global residential destination.

Midad’s Atlantis and One&Only move fits a broader pattern now visible across Saudi Arabia. The market is leaning into branded living. It is leaning into products that international buyers can immediately understand. And it is leaning into districts that can be marketed as destinations, not just neighbourhoods.

Jeddah is benefiting from that shift more than most, because its lifestyle fundamentals do a lot of the work. The coast sells itself. The strategy now is to wrap that natural advantage in brands and master planning that global capital recognises. To track where that demand is concentrating, follow the live Jeddah developments and the Saudi Arabia market coverage.