Billionaire Naguib Sawiris launches hotel brand in Mykonos

Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is launching his own ultra-luxury hotel brand instead of handing his newest resort to an international operator, with a €100 million ($112 million) property on the Greek island of Mykonos as its first hotel.

ORA Hospitality, the hotel arm of Sawiris’s property company ORA Developers, said the 93-key resort will open in May 2027, with reservations starting in January. The brand’s name has not yet been announced.

“Rather than choosing an international brand, I brought my own vision of hospitality to life,” Sawiris said in a statement.

The decision puts ORA on a different path from most luxury hotel owners, who sign management deals with groups such as Four Seasons, Marriott or Accor to tap their booking systems and loyalty programs. ORA is betting that building its own name will create more value over the long run, and says it will grow the brand selectively in places where it can build lasting businesses.

The Mykonos flagship

The resort sits on a hillside above Kalo Livadi Bay on the island’s southeastern coast, on one of the less developed stretches of the shoreline. It will have 60 rooms, 28 suites and five villas, laid out to resemble a traditional Mykonian village, and every unit will have its own outdoor space and a view of the sea.

New York-based Rockwell Group designed the property. Plans include four restaurants and bars, a 900-square-meter wellness center built around skincare, recovery and fitness, and an event space for up to 200 guests. ORA is aiming at wealthy couples, families and multigenerational groups who want to be near the island’s nightlife without staying in the middle of it, and plans tie-ups with international wellness, food and lifestyle brands.

Sawiris, who has spent holidays on Mykonos with his family for decades, is overseeing the design himself, down to the artwork by local artists and the music played around the resort.

“My connection to Mykonos is personal, rooted in decades of special memories,” he said. “This will not be just another ultra-luxury hotel.”

The project has taken longer than planned. Sawiris first aimed to open in 2026, but construction overran and Greek permitting slowed the work. He said in September that the €100 million budget already covers the extra costs from the delay, and that the resort will create about 250 direct jobs and about 1,000 indirect ones.

“We never wanted to maximize the number of rooms,” he said at the time. He added that he would “definitely” invest another €100 million in Mykonos and is looking at sites around Athens.

The resort had been referred to in Greece as Silversands Mykonos, after the hotel label ORA uses in the Caribbean. It is Sawiris’s second hotel on the island. His first, the 41-room YI Mykonos in the Elia area, opened in 2023 and stopped operating at the end of 2024.

A property empire across seven countries

Sawiris built his fortune in telecommunications. He founded Orascom Telecom, which grew into one of the largest mobile operators in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia before he sold control to Russia’s VimpelCom, now Veon, in 2011. He later moved heavily into gold mining through his investment vehicle La Mancha, and gold now makes up about half of his personal portfolio.

He started ORA Developers in 2016. The group estimates the total sales value of its projects at more than $45 billion across seven countries, with assets of more than $2.57 billion.

In Grenada, ORA owns Silversands Grand Anse, a beachfront resort, and the Silversands Beach House hotel. African Export-Import Bank provided a $30 million facility in 2024 to expand the Grand Anse property. The company is also building Ayia Napa Marina in Cyprus, a superyacht harbor with residential towers and villas; Eighteen, a golf and residential community in Islamabad, Pakistan; Madinat Al Ward in Iraq; and Bayn, a 4.8-million-square-meter beachfront community at Ghantoot in Abu Dhabi. It has six developments in Egypt.

ORA Hospitality hired Vincenzo Falcone, a former general manager of Bvlgari’s hotels in Milan and Rome, as chief executive in April.