Opening 2027

Raffles

Raffles Trojena

Name: Raffles Trojena
Address: Trojena, Saudi Arabia

A ring-shaped mountain resort inside NEOM's Trojena ski destination — about as far from a colonial grand hotel as Raffles gets.

Trojena, Saudi Arabia

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The day it opens + our first honest verdict. No paid placements. Joins the Fat Voyage list — leave any time.

First look

Raffles Trojena is slated for 2027 inside NEOM's Trojena, the mountain destination Saudi Arabia is building in its northwest. The reported design is a ring-shaped resort with 105 guestrooms, sitting in Trojena's Discover cluster. Both the NEOM newsroom and Accor press have named it.

There is no dedicated official-site page yet and it is not on the brand's Opening Soon list, so the details could still shift. A mountain Raffles is a genuine departure for a brand defined by tropical and city grand hotels. What we will be watching for is whether the ring-shaped concept is more than a render, and how an alpine-style resort in the desert highlands actually performs once Trojena comes online.

Not yet scored. We publish a Fat Score only once a hotel is open and real guests have stayed and written about it — this is a first look, not a verdict.

What we'll be watching

We haven't stayed yet — here's what will decide whether it lands when we do.

Whether Trojena is actually ready to receive guests. NEOM cancelled the destination's dam and artificial lake contract in March 2026, structural steel for the ski village followed, and the 2029 Asian Winter Games have been relocated to Almaty. Raffles itself hasn't been cancelled — but a ring-shaped resort at 2,300 metres depends on a working destination around it, and right now that destination is in visible trouble. We'll be watching whether the 2027 date means anything at all.
Whether the ring design survives contact with the build. LAVA's annular concept — 105 rooms arranged around a perimeter, three floating tiers, circular apertures in the roof — won an architecture award as a render. What it costs to construct at altitude in the desert highlands of northwest Saudi Arabia, on a project that has already seen major contractors walk away, is a different question.
Whether this is really a Raffles or just a flag on a giga-project. The brand's whole identity is built on colonial-era grand hotels in Singapore, Paris and the Seychelles. A ring-shaped mountain resort inside NEOM is a genuine departure — neither urban nor tropical, neither restoration nor heritage. We'll be watching whether the butler service and culinary ambition that define the brand actually travel into a setting the brand has never inhabited before.
Whether the ski and outdoor programming has any substance once it opens. The farm-to-table restaurant, rooftop pool and bike workshop sound coherent on paper, but Trojena was pitched around skiing and a freshwater lake — the lake contract has been cancelled. Without the surrounding winter-sports infrastructure, what's left is a dramatic building in a remote mountain location. That might be enough; it might not.

First look · gallery

Renderings & press imagery, courtesy of the hotel — details may change before opening.

Sofie, who runs the Fat Voyage booking desk with Nicolas

Want us to get you in when it opens?

Nothing to book yet — rates usually load a few months out. We're Sofie and Nicolas; tell us roughly what you're after and we'll come back the moment Raffles Trojena is bookable, with rates, what the rooms are actually like, and whether we'd go in the first season.

You'll be dealing with the two of us the whole way through, which is why we only take on a handful of trips at a time — if we're full, we'll say so. We reply by email, usually within one working day. The hotel pays us, not you: your rate is the same as booking direct, and the perks come on top.

Before it opens

When does Raffles Trojena open?

Raffles Trojena is slated for a 2027 opening, per announcements from both NEOM and Accor. That date should be treated as provisional: the wider Trojena destination has suffered major construction contract cancellations in early 2026 — including the dam and artificial lake infrastructure — and the 2029 Asian Winter Games have been moved away from the site. The hotel itself has not been cancelled, but the surrounding build is far behind where it needs to be.

Where is Raffles Trojena located?

It sits in the Trojena destination within NEOM, in the Tabuk region of northwestern Saudi Arabia, at an altitude of around 2,300 metres. Specifically, it will be part of Trojena's Discover cluster, one of six zones in the planned mountain resort destination.

Is this Raffles' first mountain resort, and who operates it?

Yes, this would be Raffles' first mountain property — the brand's portfolio is built around urban grand hotels and coastal resorts, so a high-altitude desert-highland resort is a genuine first. It is operated by Raffles Hotels & Resorts, the luxury brand under Accor, in partnership with NEOM's Hotel Division.

How many rooms will Raffles Trojena have?

The announced plan is 105 guestrooms, arranged around the perimeter of a ring-shaped structure at 2,300 metres. Three tiers of rooms face inward toward a central landscaped green space, with the roof featuring circular apertures for natural light.

Who designed Raffles Trojena, and what facilities are planned?

The architecture comes from LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture), the annular design won a 2025 International Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum. Reported facilities include a farm-to-table restaurant, a rooftop restaurant with a pool, an in-house cinema, and a bike workshop with co-working space, alongside the brand's signature butler service. No spa details have been announced yet.

Will Fat Voyage score Raffles Trojena?

We publish a Fat Score only once a hotel is open and real guests have stayed and written about it — drawn from luxury travel communities, editorial publications, and verified guests, never paid placements. This is a first look, not a verdict; we'll score it once there's enough independent signal to be fair.

Open now

What you can book today

Raffles Trojena is still under wraps. Here's what's already open and scored in our collection — more from Raffles, and nearby in Saudi Arabia.

Fat Favorite

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Le Royal Monceau - Raffles Paris

Paris, France

Most Paris palace hotels compete on gilt; this one competes on personality. Philippe Starck's redesign, with its 350-plus pieces of art scattered through the public spaces and rooms, gives the place a genuinely offbeat, gallery-like feel nothing else in the 8th attempts. One guest's deluxe room came with a giant mirrored bathroom and an Eiffel Tower sightline from the sitting area; another spent a jet-lagged first night being gently lectured by the turndown attendant to lock up her passport, which says something about the kind of care on offer here. The concierge team gets named and re-named by guests who keep coming back: Karla built a first-timer's itinerary around three tight days in Paris, and Mélinée comped a suite night after a rough previous stay. The people are why guests rebook, not the incidental nice touch. The building is where the price starts to wobble. Reports running into 2026 describe an AC problem needing several technician visits before a room change fixed it, a sewage smell and a damaged wall in another room, and a general sense that the fixtures don't always match the rate. First-floor rooms catch bar noise until midnight, and the front door goes unmanned often enough that guests mention coming and going unnoticed. The concierge, for all the goodwill, can be slow on basics: one simple restaurant confirmation took five days to come back. Matsuhisa gets real praise for the room and the staff, but more than one diner found the menu thin for the price; breakfast and Le Bar Long, snacks and all, get closer to universal approval. Book this one for the people and the art, not for flawless upkeep. If you want a spotless, predictable room over a hotel with an actual point of view, that's a fair preference and this isn't the address for it. For most people who've done the other Paris palaces and found them interchangeable, this is the one that stops feeling like a hotel.

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Raffles Singapore

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Book Raffles for the all-suite rooms and the staff who seem to have been doing this since 1887. That's the pattern across nearly every recent stay: a doorman named Narendra greeting returning guests by name after a single day out, a butler covering a cash-only cab fare when a card failed, hot honey-lemon water arriving for a hoarse guest before anyone asked. The 2019 restoration keeps earning the same praise: soaring ceilings, period furnishings, bathrooms as large as the bedroom, and it reads as restored rather than staged. Breakfast comes up constantly as the best meal of the trip, the mee goreng singled out often enough that it isn't a fluke. That's not the whole stay, though. Pre-arrival emails go unanswered for weeks — one guest waited three weeks just to confirm a room location, with nothing back. Check-in has produced real misses: wrong suite categories, guests left waiting past 3pm with a manager's apology and no follow-up after. And there's an uncomfortable, recurring thread of guests in casual dress being challenged about whether they belong on property — one traveller says it happened four separate times in a single stay. That's not a bad afternoon; it's frequent enough that you should assume it could happen to you too, whatever you're wearing. The Tiffin Room splits opinion every time: a gorgeous room, food that lands well for some and falls flat for others. If what you want is the history, the courtyards, and staff who remember your drink order by day two, this still beats Fullerton Bay for that particular feeling, and it's worth the price for it. If you're travelling casually and don't want to explain yourself to a doorman, price that risk in before you book, not after.

Fat Favorite

Raffles

Raffles Udaipur

Udaipur, India

Book Raffles Udaipur for the island itself, not just the Raffles name on the door. It sits on its own patch of Udai Sagar, reached by a short dhow boat crossing, and almost every recent guest writes about the same thing before anything else: staff who remember a kid's food allergy, an anniversary, a father's retirement, and act on it. Named staff show up constantly and specifically — Gaurav upgrading a couple to a private pool room after learning it was a celebration, a housekeeping manager named Satya walking a lost family 40 minutes back to the property on his own time, off shift. That's the kind of detail a script doesn't produce. The building earns its own case: colonial-trader-estate architecture, lake views from most rooms, and enough going on (archery, pottery, birdwatching, a nightly Rajasthani show) that several guests say they never left the island and didn't miss the old city. Chef Ranchhod's Rajasthani menu at Sawai gets called out by name more than once, dishes and all. The trade-off is the buffet, which more than one guest flags as repetitive across a multi-night stay, and one detailed account from July 2026 describes a front-desk and restaurant team that walked past guests without acknowledging them and left a tea service without napkins — a real miss, and worth knowing about, though it sits against a much larger stack of specific, glowing service reports naming staff by name, week after week. This isn't a hotel for people who want to walk out the door into old Udaipur; it's for people who want the island to be the whole trip. Families and honeymooners get the most out of it, based on what's written here. Book it for the staff and the setting, and let the boat ride be part of the arrival.

Get notified

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We'll email you the day it opens — and our first honest verdict once guests have actually stayed. No paid placements, ever.

Joins the Fat Voyage list — leave any time.

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