Ashleigh Donald, co-founder of Halo Business Consulting explains how integrated resorts are raising the bar for MENA tourism

Ashleigh Donald, co-founder of Halo Business Consulting, says integrated resorts are reshaping tourism in the Middle East by shifting the commercial focus from individual hotel performance to a broader destination ecosystem. The category — which combines hospitality, entertainment, wellness, retail, culture, events, branded residences and leisure infrastructure — is being mobilised by a regional development pipeline that reached a record 710 projects and 176,402 rooms at the end of Q4 2025, data from Lodging Econometrics shows.

"The strongest destinations adopt a different approach," Donald writes, arguing that success in the integrated-resort era is measured not only by rooms or restaurant quality but by metrics such as total revenue per available room (TrevPAR), ancillary spend per guest, length of stay and repeat visitation.

Integrated resorts as destination ecosystems

Donald traces the modern integrated-resort model to pioneers in Asia and later to Singapore, where Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa fused world-class hospitality with entertainment, retail, MICE facilities and gaming inside a tightly regulated framework. She highlights Laguna Phuket — launched in 1987 on 1,000 acres of reclaimed tin‑mining land along Bang Tao Bay — as an early blueprint that combined hotels, private residences, golf, beach leisure, lagoons and shared guest infrastructure.

• Laguna Phuket: an early template where the guest experience "was never confined to a single hotel," Donald notes, emphasizing the operational value of connected properties and shared leisure assets.
• Singapore model: the city-state's whole-of-government coordination through the Singapore Tourism Board is cited as a factor that elevated integrated resorts into globally recognised destination drivers.
• Las Vegas example: Las Vegas Sands' planned USD 8 billion expansion at Marina Bay Sands — including a fourth hotel tower, luxury suites, a major arena, expanded gaming and conference space — demonstrates that major resorts are ongoing projects rather than finished products.

Donald stresses that the hotel itself remains a critical component but is "no longer the sole commercial driver." She argues developers and operators must curate interconnected offerings that give guests multiple reasons to arrive, stay, spend and return. That shift requires different operational thinking and the adoption of new performance metrics beyond RevPAR.

In the Middle East, Donald says the model is taking a distinct form shaped by economic diversification goals, luxury tourism ambitions, entertainment reform and national vision strategies. The region’s development pipeline underscores this ambition, and developers are increasingly judged on the strength, coherence and originality of the surrounding destination rather than on room counts alone.

Outlook: scale, coherence and adaptability

Donald adds that the most effective integrated resorts are operated as "living, connected ecosystems" and continue to evolve to meet market demand. She points to projects such as Wynn Al Marjan Island in Ras Al Khaimah as examples of the Gulf’s new wave that emphasise entertainment and mixed-use programming. As supply grows across the region, Donald concludes the competitive edge will come from how well projects integrate hospitality with broader destination components and how they align with national tourism strategies.