Red Sea

6 records, all Saudi, and the youngest hospitality water in the world. The reefs here had almost no recreational visitors in living memory because the country was closed to tourism, and the first international resorts opened only in the last few years.

The development framework is the fact worth knowing. A cap on keys across the whole destination, marine protection written into the plan, and villas prefabricated on the mainland and floated into position so the reef is never a construction site. Whether that holds as the destination fills is the open question, and the register will record the answer rather than predict it.

Architecture is doing the talking meanwhile: mirrored steel at Shebara, Kengo Kuma's curves at Ummahat, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve at Nujuma. Everything here is new, which means there is no operating record to read and every entry says so.