St. Regis Marbella: €500M Las Dunas Resort Confirmed Marriott International has confirmed Marbella's first St. Regis, the brand's second on the coast after Casares: a 169-key resort and 151 branded residences at Las Dunas, Marbella East, backed by more than €500M and due to open in 2031. A St Regis for Marbella East Marbella has pulled off something of a coup in international hospitality circles. Marriott International, working alongside Platinum Estates and Sierra Blanca Estates, has confirmed the long-rumoured deal to bring the St Regis name to Las Dunas, the beachfront sector in Marbella East that has sat on the drawing board for years. It will be the first St Regis property in Marbella and the brand's second location on the Costa del Sol, with an opening pencilled in for 2031 and groundwork beginning this year. For anyone unfamiliar with the brand, St Regis is Marriott's flagship ultra-luxury label, the kind of name that pulls in high-net-worth travellers and, increasingly, branded-residence buyers who want a hotel-managed lifestyle attached to a private home. Landing it in Marbella puts the town in the same conversation as destinations like Rome, Venice and Mexico City, where St Regis properties have become shorthand for a certain tier of luxury real estate. What will actually be built The scheme splits into two parts. The St Regis Marbella Resort will have 169 rooms, while alongside it will rise 151 branded residences, ranging from two to five bedrooms and in sizes from 150 up to 1,000 square metres. That spread suggests everything from compact apartments to genuinely vast villa-style homes under the same brand umbrella. The site itself runs to 160,000 square metres, including more than 350 metres of protected seafront, a stretch of coastline that has remained largely undeveloped despite its location. Hotel guests and residence owners will share restaurants, a wellness area, sports facilities, pools and a beach club open throughout the year rather than just the summer season. Design work has gone to Rockwell Group, the New York-based firm behind hospitality projects worldwide, with Marbella-based AGAS acting as local architect, a pairing that typically signals international design ambition paired with practical knowledge of Spanish planning requirements. Jobs: the part neighbours will feel first Before any of that opens, residents of Las Chapas and the wider Marbella East area will notice the construction phase. The developers estimate more than 2,000 direct jobs and 4,500 indirect ones during the building period, figures that cover everything from site labour to the wider supply chain of contractors, suppliers and services that a project this size pulls in. Once operational, the resort is expected to sustain around 450 permanent positions, a meaningful addition to the local hospitality workforce. The investment is put at more than €500 million, which places Las Dunas among the largest private developments on the coast in the current cycle, rivalling other major schemes that have reshaped Marbella's skyline and economy over the past decade. Public works bundled into the deal Marbella City Hall has negotiated more than a hotel out of this agreement. Mayor Ángeles Muñoz says the public package covers roughly 110,000 of the site's 160,000 square metres, a substantial carve-out given the overall footprint. It includes regeneration of nearly 50,000 square metres of dune system, a 500-metre-plus extension of the Senda Litoral coastal path, and 277 public parking spaces. The most immediately useful element for people living in the area may be the new service road running parallel to the A-7. Muñoz describes it as fundamental for connections in Las Chapas, pointing to easier access to surrounding urbanisations and some relief for the traffic that regularly clogs this stretch of coast road, particularly in summer. Why here, and why now "Marbella continues to stand out as one of Europe's most desired luxury destinations, with lasting appeal among international travellers and home buyers," said Jerome Briet, Chief Development Officer for EMEA at Marriott International. It is a line developers reach for often, but the underlying point holds: front-line land at this scale has effectively disappeared from Marbella's market. Assembling the Las Dunas plot took years of negotiation over terrain, licensing and partnership structures before anyone could announce a brand. This marks the second St Regis presence in the province, following the stand-alone St Regis Residences already under development in Casares further down the coast. Together, the two projects suggest Marriott sees genuine depth of demand for ultra-luxury branded living in this corner of Spain, not just a one-off bet. What it changes for the area Las Chapas has lived with the Las Dunas question for a long time, a prime coastal plot waiting for someone to decide its purpose. That answer now has a name, a build timeline and a global hospitality brand attached to it. For current residents, the next several years will bring the disruption that comes with large-scale construction before the area settles into life alongside a year-round premium neighbour, replacing what has long been a fenced-off stretch of undeveloped coast. Those tracking the branded-residences segment of the Costa del Sol market more broadly can follow the project's progress via branded.homes, while buyers and sellers weighing up the wider effect on Marbella East property values may find it worth speaking to local specialists such as Marbella New Homes.