Hospitality destinations are increasingly relying on AI-native networking and intelligent infrastructure to deliver seamless digital experiences while supporting long-term sustainability and operational efficiency. Sultan Moraished, Group Head of Technology and Corporate Excellence, Red Sea Global, and Jacob Chacko, Regional Director, Middle East & Africa, HPE Networking, tell us how AI-driven networking, automation and Wi-Fi-first infrastructure are helping create more connected, personalised and resilient experiences for guests and operational teams across Red Sea Global’s expanding destinations.
HPE has announced that Red Sea Global (RSG), the developer behind regenerative tourism destinations The Red Sea and AMAALA, is using a self-driving network designed by HPE as its foundational network architecture for its large-scale expansion of its resorts. The new agile, future-ready network, featuring secure, AI-native switching and Wi-Fi, helps RSG scale efficiently while maintaining sustainability, operational excellence and premium digital engagement for visitors.
Aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and supported by significant investment in tourism infrastructure, RSG’s current destinations expect to add US$8.79 billion annually to Saudi Arabia’s economy and create 120,000 jobs when fully complete. To support this, RSG requires a secure, seamless, Wi-Fi-centric guest experience across a significantly expanded footprint. Its foundational network architecture, built on HPE Aruba Networking, enables intelligent, secure, always-on connectivity that supports smart destination management, real-time environmental monitoring and highly personalised guest experiences.
“Choosing an AI-native self-driving network solution that meets our need for seamless connectivity while supporting our expansion plans was a critical priority for us,” said Sultan Moraished, Group Head of Technology and Corporate Excellence, Red Sea Global. “By selecting HPE, we are not only addressing day-to-day connectivity needs for our guests but also enabling a foundational digital platform that supports our broader strategic vision of delivering exceptional guest experiences.”
The Wi-Fi-first environment leverages HPE Aruba Networking Wi-Fi 6E, supported by an end-to-end enterprise network that spans from the data centre core to the edge. The Wi-Fi, for example, has enough bandwidth to support HD video streaming while cycling around the resort. The network currently includes approximately 17,000 access points and 10,000 switching and routing devices. RSG leverages HPE Aruba Central AIOps for insight, automation and assurance, alongside HPE Aruba Networking CX switching to deliver consistent, high-performance connectivity across multiple locations, supporting resort development across Saudi Arabia’s diverse landscape.
Additionally, HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect Enterprise appliances are deployed, complete with bandwidth, security and high availability licences for guests. This SD-WAN solution simplifies network architecture, improves orchestration and enhances application performance. The overall project will ensure the expectations of 20,000 simultaneous network users are met with an exceptional Wi-Fi experience.
“We are proud to support Red Sea Global in delivering one of the most ambitious hospitality projects in the region,” said Jacob Chacko, Regional Director, Middle East and Africa, Networking, HPE. “This collaboration demonstrates how secure, AI-native networking can act as a catalyst for innovation, helping organisations create highly personalised, digitally enabled environments while maintaining the scalability and resilience required for long-term growth.”
We asked Sultan Moraished, Group Head of Technology and Corporate Excellence, Red Sea Global, further questions to find out more about the project.
How does the AI-native self-driving network support Red Sea Global’s vision for scalable and sustainable resort expansion?
At Red Sea Global, technology is not an add-on to the destination experience, it is part of the foundation of how we build sustainably and scale intelligently. Our AI-native self-driving network allows us to manage a highly distributed environment with greater efficiency, resilience and visibility in real time.
As we continue expanding our destinations across islands, inland resorts, airports, marinas and operational facilities, the network gives us the flexibility to scale rapidly without adding unnecessary operational complexity or resource consumption. It also supports our broader regenerative tourism vision by enabling smarter energy usage, predictive maintenance and data-driven decision-making across the ecosystem.
Ultimately, the network is helping us create a future-ready digital infrastructure that grows alongside the destination while maintaining high standards of sustainability and guest experience.
What role does intelligent networking play in delivering seamless and personalised guest experiences across your destinations?
Intelligent networking is central to delivering the kind of connected luxury experience modern travellers increasingly expect. Guests move across multiple environments during their stay such as airports, resorts, beaches, marinas, wellness facilities, and mobility systems and the experience must feel seamless throughout.
Our network enables consistent high-speed connectivity, supports digital guest services, and allows us to personalise experiences in a more proactive way. Whether it is our smart luggage management system, a smart room functionality, AI-powered concierge services, frictionless mobility, or personalised entertainment and hospitality offerings, the network acts as the digital backbone that connects these experiences together.
The goal is to make technology feel invisible to the guest while enabling a more intuitive, responsive and memorable journey.
How are automation and AIOps helping improve network performance and operational efficiency at scale?
Operating one of the world’s most ambitious tourism destinations requires a very different approach to infrastructure management. Traditional network operations models are simply not sufficient at this scale and geographic complexity.
By leveraging automation and AIOps, we are able to predict issues before they impact operations, automate network optimisation and significantly reduce manual intervention. This improves uptime, accelerates troubleshooting, and allows our teams to focus on strategic innovation rather than reactive maintenance.
The AI-native architecture continuously learns from network behaviour, which enhances performance and reliability over time. This is especially important in remote environments where operational agility and resilience are critical.
What challenges did you face in deploying a Wi-Fi-first environment across such a large and diverse landscape?
The scale and diversity of the environment created unique challenges. We are deploying infrastructure across remote islands, coastal regions, desert landscapes, mountainous terrain, and rapidly developing hospitality assets, all while maintaining strict sustainability standards.
Building a Wi-Fi-first environment required careful planning around coverage, resilience, environmental conditions and integration with operational technologies. Connectivity also needed to support both guest-facing experiences and mission-critical systems simultaneously.
Another challenge was ensuring consistency across a rapidly evolving destination ecosystem. We approached this by designing a highly flexible and cloud-managed architecture capable of adapting quickly as new resorts, experiences and operational assets come online.
How does the network infrastructure support real-time environmental monitoring and smart destination management?
Our digital infrastructure plays an important role in supporting Red Sea Global’s regenerative tourism ambitions. The network connects a wide ecosystem of IoT devices, sensors, and operational platforms that allow us to monitor environmental and operational conditions in real time.
This includes areas such as energy optimisation, water management, mobility systems, asset monitoring and environmental analytics. Real-time visibility enables faster and more informed decision-making while helping us reduce waste, optimise resources and protect the surrounding natural environment.
The ability to unify operational and sustainability data into a single intelligent ecosystem is one of the most valuable aspects of the platform.
What future innovations do you plan to enable using this foundational digital platform?
This platform creates the foundation for the next generation of intelligent destinations. We see significant opportunities around AI-driven operations, autonomous mobility, immersive guest experiences, robotics, predictive sustainability management and advanced Digital Twin capabilities.
As the destination evolves, the network will support increasingly autonomous and data-driven systems that improve both operational performance and guest engagement. We are also exploring how emerging technologies can help create more adaptive environments that respond dynamically to guest preferences and environmental conditions in real time.
Our ambition is to position Red Sea Global as one of the world’s leading examples of how technology, sustainability and hospitality can come together to shape the future of tourism.
We asked Jacob Chacko, Regional Director, Middle East & Africa, HPE Networking, further questions to find out more about the project.
How did HPE tailor its networking solution to meet the unique scale and environmental requirements of Red Sea Global’s destinations?
Red Sea Global operates at an unprecedented scale, so we designed the network from day one as a self‑driving, AI‑native platform that can continuously adapt to changing demands. Built on a Wi‑Fi‑first architecture, it delivers secure, always‑on connectivity from the data centre core to the far edge across a highly distributed footprint.
What’s critical here is that the network is not static infrastructure – it’s an intelligent system. Through cloud-native, self‑driving capabilities, it can automatically optimise performance, anticipate issues and enable use cases like environmental monitoring and personalised guest services.
This approach ensures Red Sea Global can scale sustainably while maintaining premium, seamless experiences for every guest.
What were the key technical challenges in deploying more than 17,000 access points and 10,000 networking devices across the resorts?
At this scale – over 17,000 access points and 10,000 network devices – the challenge shifts from deployment to continuous orchestration and optimisation across a highly distributed environment.
Traditional networks require significant manual oversight, but in a project of this magnitude, that simply isn’t viable. This is where self-driving networking becomes essential. By embedding AI-driven automation and AIOps through HPE Aruba Central, the network can proactively detect, diagnose and resolve issues before they impact operations or guest experience.
In parallel, SD-WAN simplifies the underlying architecture, ensuring resilient connectivity across remote locations while meaningfully reducing operational complexity.
How does the integration of Wi-Fi 6E and SD-WAN technologies enhance both guest experience and operational performance in this project?
Wi-Fi 6E and SD-WAN act as complementary layers in delivering a modern, experience-driven hospitality network. Wi-Fi 6E provides the high-capacity, low-latency foundation needed to support immersive, always-connected guest services, whether that’s seamless streaming, smart room controls or digital interactions across the resort.
SD-WAN, meanwhile, brings intelligence to how traffic is managed across sites, optimising application performance and ensuring critical services are always prioritised.
When combined with self-driving network capabilities, this becomes even more powerful – the network dynamically adjusts in real time, maintaining consistent performance and enabling both exceptional guest experiences and highly efficient operations.
What measurable outcomes have this deployment delivered so far in terms of connectivity, reliability and efficiency for Red Sea Global?
This deployment is already delivering outcomes at significant scale, supporting up to 20,000 simultaneous users with a seamless, high-performance wireless experience across the destination.
From an operational standpoint, the self-driving capabilities are key. AI-driven automation reduces manual intervention, accelerates issue resolution and ensures the network is constantly optimised, directly improving both reliability and efficiency.
Beyond connectivity, Red Sea Global now has a future-ready digital platform that enables innovation, supports sustainability goals and delivers highly personalised guest experiences, demonstrating how autonomous, AI-native networking can fundamentally transform hospitality at scale.
