Six Senses SHAHARUT Israeli businessman Ronny Douek makes his hospitality debut in the Negev desert with a restrained resort inspired by the Nabateans. Words: Emma Love Photography: © Assaf Pinvhuk (unless otherwise stated)
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n hour’s flight south from Tel Aviv, Israel’s landscape couldn’t be more different. The arid Negev desert makes up more than half the country’s total land
mass and its most southerly point – the Arava Valley, which borders Jordan – has only 5,000 inhabitants. It’s here, in this remote region, with spectacular views of the Edom mountains, that Israeli businessman Ronny Douek has opened his first hotel: Six Senses Shaharut. “I have a strong affinity with the desert and was looking for many years to build a property here,” he explains. “At one stage I took a helicopter to see a piece of land on the Ramon Crater, but there was an existing development and I wanted somewhere totally isolated. On that same flight, the pilot told me about another 64 acres, which already had permission for a hotel – something that can take 10 to 15 years for approval.” He bought the land in 2008, spent the first four years securing planning and then another nine on construction before eventually opening the hotel in 2022, with the worst of the pandemic over. Taking inspiration from the nomadic Nabateans, who some 2,000 years ago would camp on the Incense trade route from the Persian Gulf to Gaza – they also carved Petra from the sandstone cliffs – Douek knew that he wanted the resort to blend in with the surroundings. He asked students from the architecture department at Jerusalem’s Bezalel University to prepare a white paper setting out their proposals, then ran a competition for local architects. “I asked the students to take into consideration our aim of reflecting the traditional Nabatean way of life,” he recalls.
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