The Gulf’s Forbes Star Surge Signals a New Era for Luxury Hospitality

Atlantis The Royal held its Grand Reveal in January 2023 with an opening event that the internet watched. Beyoncé performed to ten thousand fireworks in the kind of spectacle that a city built on spectacle had still managed to make feel like an occasion.

Three years after opening its doors to guests in February 2023, the Atlantis Forbes stars story confirmed something more lasting than any opening night. Atlantis Dubai had earned more new stars than any other integrated resort in the world in a single year, rising from 31 Forbes stars to 57, from Number 6 to Number 2 in the global integrated resort rankings. Paul Baker, President of Atlantis Global, called it a stellar year for the Atlantis Forbes stars story, an understatement that is entirely charming.

But here is the question the coverage left unanswered: what does it mean when a resort nearly doubles its credential count in twelve months, in a region where the Forbes Five-Star count rose from 24 to 28 GCC properties in the same year, at the exact moment the Gulf’s hospitality investment cycle is at its most intense and its most watched?

The Atlantis Forbes stars answer is more interesting than the number.

What 57 Atlantis Forbes stars actually represent

Start with what the Atlantis Forbes stars credential actually requires. Its 900-point inspection criteria cover every dimension of the guest experience, administered by anonymous inspectors who pay their own way, assess without announcement and have been refining the same framework across 68 annual award cycles. The credential is rigorous in a way that most hospitality ratings are not, and the rigour is precisely what makes it worth pursuing.

Each Atlantis Forbes star required a separate inspection. The 57 stars distributed across Atlantis The Royal, Atlantis The Palm, restaurants including Ossiano, FZN by Björn Frantzén and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, and wellness experiences including AWAKEN Wellness are each independently assessed. The cumulative star count is the cumulative operational standard across all of them, which is considerably harder to build than a single Five-Star property.

FZN by Björn Frantzén at Atlantis The Palm became the first restaurant in Dubai to receive a new Five-Star rating in 2026, while Ossiano at Atlantis The Palm retained its Five-Star status. AWAKEN Wellness at Atlantis The Royal became the only spa in Dubai to receive a new Five-Star rating in 2026. Atlantis The Royal received the triple five, Five Stars simultaneously for the hotel, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal restaurant and AWAKEN Wellness spa, the first such distinction in the history of Middle East and Africa hospitality.

A property that opened in February 2023 has built the operational culture to deliver that across its entire portfolio in three years. That is the Atlantis Forbes stars story in its most essential form, and it is a genuinely impressive one. and it is a genuinely impressive one.

The question the awards coverage left unanswered

Here is the number that sits behind the Atlantis Forbes stars number.

The Gulf had 24 Forbes Five-Star hotels in 2025 and has 28 in 2026. The UAE has 19 Five-Star properties, Dubai alone has 14 and the Gulf holds approximately 8 percent of the world’s Five-Star hotel credentials in a region that represents a fraction of global hospitality supply.

Two readings of that concentration are commercially legitimate and both deserve attention.

The first is that the Gulf has genuinely built a hospitality product that meets the world’s most rigorous independent assessment criteria at remarkable scale and speed. The Atlantis Forbes stars trajectory supports this. The 900-point inspection framework is demanding enough that sustaining it across 57 separate credentials is operationally implausible as anything other than genuine excellence.

The second is that the Gulf’s ratings expansion is partly a function of the Gulf’s investment in the ratings relationship, and that a concentration of Five-Star recognition in a single market at the moment of its most intense hospitality investment cycle deserves the scrutiny that any metric receives when the incentives to achieve it are particularly strong.

The honest Atlantis Forbes stars answer is probably somewhere between the two. The Atlantis Forbes stars trajectory is genuine. The pace of the broader Gulf expansion is worth watching. The credential is valuable precisely because it is rigorous, and the rigour is what makes the question worth asking as well as the race worth running.

Three new Five-Stars and three very different stories about how they got there

The four new Middle East Forbes Five-Star hotels in 2026 tell three distinct stories about how a property earns the credential, and for every developer in Saudi Arabia’s pipeline, each story carries a different and specific commercial instruction.

Emirates Palace opened in Abu Dhabi in 2005 as a government statement about the emirate’s luxury ambitions. It has operated for seventeen years under various iterations of its identity. In 2023 Mandarin Oriental took over its management. In 2026 it received its first Forbes Five-Star. Three years from brand transition to top-tier credential. That is the most specific available data point on what genuine operational culture change actually costs in time.

Grosvenor House opened in Dubai in 2003. It was repositioned as a Luxury Collection hotel under Marriott. In 2026, twenty-three years after opening, it received its first Forbes Five-Star. Every developer in the Saudi pipeline who expects a rapid credential trajectory should read that number carefully.

Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea, received a Forbes Five-Star in its opening year. This is the most commercially encouraging result in the entire 2026 Forbes Gulf selection, because it demonstrates that the right brand, with a sufficiently mature and specific operational culture, can deploy Five-Star standards from day one in a new destination. The Ritz-Carlton Reserve credential is the data the Saudi pipeline needs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What every developer in the Saudi pipeline should take from the Atlantis story

The Atlantis Forbes stars model is a portfolio model, and that is the most commercially instructive thing about it.

The 57 stars are distributed across two hotels, multiple restaurants, spas and experiences. Each star required a separate inspection, a separate standard and a separate operational culture to maintain. The rise from 31 to 57 is the commercial return on expanding the number of credentialled venues within a single destination rather than simply maintaining the hotel standard and treating everything else as support.

For every developer building in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea or Diriyah Gate pipeline, that model carries a specific instruction. The properties that accumulate the most significant credential portfolios in the Gulf’s next hospitality cycle will be the ones that treat every restaurant, every spa and every experiential venue as a separate credential opportunity rather than an amenity that fills the time between the room and the pool.

The Gulf’s Forbes Five-Star count is at a record high, the Atlantis Forbes stars count is at a record high and Saudi Arabia has earned its first. The quality race has begun in the most commercially serious way available, with anonymous inspectors, 900-point criteria and a credential that compounds in value every time a new venue earns it.

The most interesting Atlantis Forbes stars question for 2027 is which Saudi property earns the region’s second Forbes Five-Star in an opening year. The Atlantis Forbes stars answer to that question will tell us more about the state of Gulf luxury hospitality than any opening-night spectacle ever could.

Read next on The Pillar Edit: The Middle East is building more luxury hotels than any region on earth.