Foreign tycoons can see a changing city from the top of the RAK International Corporate Centre. To the north, there is a long stretch of desert. To the west, luxury villas dot the Persian Gulf coast. This tiny Emirate in Dubai wants to be the next haven for billionaires.
A few miles away, Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts Ltd. is planning a $3.9 billion gaming resort, according to its website.
This is Ras Al Khaimah, a northern UAE territory about 45 minutes from Dubai‘s international airport. The emirate, best known for its mountain peaks and ceramics company, is now positioning itself as a haven for high-net-worth individuals.
Ras Al Khaimah – RAK for short – is pursuing an ambitious foreign direct investment strategy that is luring five-star hotels, industrialists, and adventure-seeking tourists from countries ranging from Russia to the Czech Republic. While a Wynn Resort could provide a significant boost, other initiatives are also attracting wealthy executives.
This tiny Emirate in Dubai wants to be next haven for billionaires, see the picture:
According to immigration consultants and advisers, RAK will also benefit from efforts to attract more wealthy individuals to the emirate through the United Arab Emirates citizenship-by-investment programme. Simultaneously, the emirate is establishing a new free zone for digital and virtual asset companies. Tens of thousands of foreign firms have already been registered and incorporated by RAK ICC.
According to people familiar with the situation, there are also plans for a superyacht storage facility and efforts to make Ras Al Khaimah a yacht manufacturing hub. One Polish yacht builder, which counts Rafael Nadal and Fernando Alonso among its clients, has announced plans to build luxury catamarans in RAK with a 30 million euro ($33 million) investment.
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“Some now like to call it the Las Vegas of the Gulf, but ultimately RAK should be RAK as it has plenty to shape its direction,” said Izzat Dajani, a former senior Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker and founding chief executive of the Ras Al Khaimah Investment and Development Office, the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund. “The government will be looking at the return on capital in multiple ways – the financial return, the social return, and the cultural return.”
RAK is one of the UAE’s seven emirates, and its ambitious plans face numerous challenges. It’s smaller than Rhode Island, and large swaths of the desert city still have a ghost town feel to them. Some of its major plans have previously failed. After the project’s Luxembourg-based organizer defaulted on payments, Real Madrid canceled a $1 billion soccer-themed resort planned for RAK in 2013.
The government is now focusing on wealthy Chinese as the world’s second-largest economy relaxes Covid travel restrictions. A Wynn project would be located between the world’s top two gambling destinations, Macau and Las Vegas, assisting the emirate in attracting wealthy visitors from the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.
The emirate hopes that many of the wealthy visitors from around the world will stay indefinitely. RAK is now attempting to convert this tourist influx into long-term economic benefits.
The UAE says its citizenship program allows select foreign investors and specialists from other categories to be nominated for citizenship, a program that is benefiting the country as some Caribbean and European nations curb their own schemes.
The government of Ras Al Khaimah did not respond to phone and email requests for comment, nor did efforts to reach them at the RAK Media Office.
According to one government-commissioned study by Ernst & Young into the potential impact of a gaming resort, RAK could potentially quadruple its annual tourists by 2030, while the population grows by a quarter million to 650,000 from 400,000 today, according to some people familiar with the matter.
That is still a small proportion of the UAE’s total population of more than 9 million people.
Villas in the Butain Al Samer district of the desert city, about 45 minutes from Dubai’s international airport.
At the center of these plans is the emirate’s ruler, Sheikh Saud, who has a knack for testing the waters with new policies.
The Waldorf Astoria Ras Al Khaimah Hotel in Al Hamra Village is on the left. The emirate set a new record for annual visitors last year.
He has delegated much of the emirate’s financial strategy to his daughter, Stanford Business School alumna Sheikha Amneh Al Qasimi, who chairs the RAK Investment and Development Office.
RAK has ambitious plans to position itself as an alternative getaway to Dubai, according to Knight Frank in a report aimed at high-net-worth individuals.
The planned Wynn resort “is certainly giving the UAE’s northernmost emirate a certain je ne sais quoi, particularly amongst the uber-wealthy,” said Faisal Durrani, head of Middle East research at Knight Frank.
Still, questions remain about how a Wynn Resort would ultimately be operated, given that gambling is prohibited under Sharia law, people familiar with the matter said. Casinos aren’t legal in the UAE as yet. It remains unclear when and if there might be changes to that policy. In May, senior government officials said there were no imminent plans to allow gambling, but casino operators, consultants, and lawyers familiar with the matter said at the time that there had been early discussions and a change was being considered.
Between the city centre and Al Hamra Village is the public Flamingo Beach.
Nonetheless, five-star hotels are already heavily invested in RAK. Last year, the InterContinental Hotels Group, Mövenpick, and Radisson opened new properties, increasing the emirate’s inventory by 17% to more than 8,000 rooms. Another 19 properties, including global brands such as the Westin and Nobu, are in the works and will be built by a Russian developer.
Over the next few years, nearly 6,000 new rooms will be added. Many are on the beach, which fits the emirate’s pitch of sea, sun, and sand.
RAK may be on the way to slowly emerging “as the UAE’s next hospitality hotspot,” Knight Frank’s Durrani said.
