How ASDC is transforming Somabay to a first-home destination: When Somabay first emerged as a tourist destination over two decades ago, it had little to offer other than its gorgeous 11-km coastline with a five-and-a-half km sandy beach. Fast forward to today and developer Abu Soma Touristic Development Company (ASDC) has made Somabay a home to a wide selection of luxury hotels and residential properties that exude a certain lifestyle.

Enterprise sat down with Ibrahim El Messiri, the CEO of ASDC — the master developers of Somabay — who talks us through his strategy to make Somabay a first-home destination where people and families can live, work, study, and enjoy themselves. For El Messiri, this meant finding the right target market and creating the right identity and lifestyle for Somabay.

El Messiri is no stranger to creating communities and developing cities, having worked with the likes of Bechtel for 15 years and Madinet Nasr Housing for three. His career saw him work on projects such as the Doha International Airport, the Channel Tunnel in the UK, and Abu Dhabi Port.

** LISTEN TO THE DISCUSSION AS A PODCAST on our website (runtime: 48:48) or tune in via Apple Podcasts | Anghami | Google Podcasts | Spotify). Or you can read edited excerpts of his own words below:

The origin story of Somabay is quite interesting: The story I hear is that people from the Swedish Embassy were touring the area to see the progress of projects in the area at the time and they saw this bay and all its reefs and people slowly started going there for diving.

Private developers soon acquired the land and there was a gentleman called Wagih Hanna who worked with the original shareholders to start building hotels on the property. The idea of Somabay began in the late ‘80s and the company was set up officially in 1991 with financing from the World Bank. The first hotels opened in 1998 which were the Sheraton and the Robinson.

I joined Somabay in November 2014 and I inherited a business that had five hotels — most of them at the end of their lifecycle and needing renovation — a golf course, a spa, and a semi-finished marina. This was at a tumultuous time for the tourism industry and the company was under a lot of duress and our staff were loyal, but demotivated.

Transforming Somabay to what it is now was quite a daunting task. The first thing we needed to do was plug the cashflow gap so that I could pay salaries. The second thing is that we needed to rebuild everything in a way where it was both functional and stylish.

There were certain aspects that we couldn’t ignore if we wanted to turn Somabay into a first-home destination. The three biggest components to make Somabay family-friendly were shopping, education, and healthcare. Initially we started with a medical center — it picks up maybe 95% of all cases, while more critical cases go to Hurghada or El Gouna. As for education, we recently signed with GEMS to launch a school, and I think it’s a necessary investment because there’s a big gap in the Red Sea when it comes to quality education. We’re now going through the final steps to get approvals from the necessary ministries.

Somabay was for those too young to have bought into El Gouna: When I was younger I would spend my vacations in El Gouna and by the time I was established enough to buy something there, I realized I had missed the boat. Everything was already sold and young people who wanted to be part of that community could only find small units that were far away from the sea. So these people in their late 20s and 30s — who want to wake up, put on their flip-flops, and head to the beach — are one of our main target markets. We said, “Okay we need to bring like-minded people and they’ll bring their friends.” And that’s what happened. One person would bring 10 more and so on, and it grows with time.

And a big part of it is sports: The activities we provide at Somabay reflect a growing trend among our generation here in Egypt. However, the international community is also taking notice and we realized that a lot of sports teams set up camps in Somabay. We’re very close to signing an agreement to launch an aquatic center for premier league swimmers who would prefer to swim and train here than in cold European countries. We’ve also previously signed a long-term agreement with TriFactory to host their endurance festival and last year we introduced the Oceanman race. Soma also has lawn tennis, foot golf, kite surfing, and much more.

We wanted to create a new architectural design that would define our character. El Gouna already had that Nubian style architecture so we wanted to do something different. We engaged one of the coolest architects in town, Raef Fahmi Architects, and they made us this really avante-garde design. You know it’s going to work when people hate it when they first see it [laughs]. If something is controversial, then it starts a conversation.

The current real estate climate is a bit difficult amid the surge in building materials prices — but history has taught us well: In 2016 during the devaluation, we learned a very harsh lesson and we were able — with difficulty — to mitigate and absorb the hardships at the time. We’ve actually taken a lot of hits in the past 10 years, and over time you learn how to get through it. First of all is understanding that this is a crisis that will end and then you start using different tactics. The biggest risk is finishing materials so you start off with building your inventory and securing those rates even if it puts a lot of burden on your cashflow.

Looking forward, we’re now adding three new hotels to the mix, but we haven’t yet signed contracts so I can’t say much.