St. Regis Las Dunas | Marbella’s €500 Million Seafront Resort

More than 500 million euros is now earmarked for St. Regis Las Dunas, a new Marriott managed hotel and residential resort planned for the seafront at Las Chapas, east of Marbella. The move follows years of planning changes finally reaching a milestone this month, and it places one of hospitality’s most recognisable five star names on a stretch of coastline that has sat largely undeveloped for decades.

The scheme covers more than 160,000 square metres of land with over 350 metres of seafront, next to the dunes at Playa Real de Zaragoza and close to Las Mimosas beach. For anyone already browsing property for sale in Las Chapas, this is one of the clearest signals yet that the area’s eastern stretch is entering a new phase, with institutional capital and a global hotel brand committing to a site that developers themselves describe as having become something of a dumping ground before this scheme took shape.

The plan includes a 169 room hotel and 151 luxury residences ranging from two to five bedrooms, built across a footprint that follows the natural slope of the land down towards the water. Restaurants, a wellness area, sports facilities, swimming pools and a beach club are all part of the brief, with the beach club open to hotel guests and residence owners alike. An opening in 2031 has been mentioned, though no construction start date has been confirmed yet.

St. Regis Las Dunas and the Site at Las Chapas

Las Chapas sits on Marbella’s eastern flank, a quieter residential district known for wide beaches and a slower pace than the resort town’s famous centre. The land set aside for St. Regis Las Dunas has been classified as buildable for years, sitting beside the dunes of Playa Real de Zaragoza and within reach of Las Mimosas beach, yet it stayed largely untouched while development elsewhere in Marbella pressed ahead.

At over 160,000 square metres and more than 350 metres of seafront, it is a scale rarely available on this coastline today. Those behind the resort have described the dune area as having become something of a dumping ground in recent years, and say the new development will involve cleaning and regenerating the site rather than simply building over it. Readers who already know the area through our guide to Marbella will recognise Las Chapas as one of the city’s larger, lower density districts, which is part of why a site of this size has stayed available for so long.

A plot this large, this close to the water and still buildable is genuinely rare on the Costa del Sol at this point, which is partly why the announcement has drawn attention well beyond the usual property pages. Most of the comparable seafront land between Marbella and the eastern municipal boundary was built out years ago, so a single scheme of over 160,000 square metres changes the character of that stretch almost on its own.

The Hotel and Residences Planned for the Resort

The hotel itself will carry 169 rooms and be managed by Marriott under the St. Regis name, a brand built on long stays, personal service and a certain quiet formality that suits this part of the coast well. Alongside it will sit 151 residences, ranging from two to five bedrooms and from 150 to 1,000 square metres, so the product spans everything from a compact coastal apartment to a very large family home.

Shared facilities include several restaurants, a wellness area, sports facilities, swimming pools and a beach club, with the beach club made available to hotel guests and residence owners together rather than kept separate. The design is set to follow the natural slope of the land, with gardens and open space worked into the layout instead of a flat block of construction. It is the kind of scheme that tends to interest buyers who are also weighing up new developments elsewhere on the coast, where branded residences have become one of the more active parts of the market.

Pairing a hotel operator with a residential offering is now a familiar formula in Marbella, and it tends to appeal to owners who want hotel grade services on their doorstep without living inside a hotel. The shared beach club in particular is the kind of amenity that owners in this bracket have come to expect as standard rather than as an extra, and it usually factors into how these residences are priced once sales eventually open.

The range of unit sizes, from a 150 square metre two bedroom apartment up to a 1,000 square metre five bedroom residence, suggests the development is aimed at more than one type of buyer rather than a single ultra high net worth bracket. That spread is useful context for anyone comparing St. Regis Las Dunas with other five star branded schemes on the coast, where unit sizes can vary just as widely even within a single development.

How the Budget Grew From 350 Million Euros to 500 Million Euros

When this project first became public in December 2024, as The Olive Press reported, it was known as Las Dunas Club, with a budget of around 350 million euros, a 150 room hotel and 170 homes. The figures have shifted since then. The investment now stands at more than 500 million euros, the hotel has grown to 169 rooms, and the residential count has settled at 151 units.

That kind of movement is normal for a scheme this size and this slow, where costs, specifications and unit counts are revised as planning conditions change and construction prices move over several years. A smaller number of larger, more expensive residences is a familiar pattern in Marbella’s luxury segment, and it tends to track with the kind of demand we see from buyers using our own property valuation calculator to size up what a seafront plot of this kind might be worth once approvals are in place.

A rise from 350 million to over 500 million euros over roughly two years also says something about how construction costs and specification levels have moved across the luxury end of the Costa del Sol more broadly, not just on this one site. We see the same direction of travel across most of the large scale schemes we track, which is one reason buyers increasingly ask us to model costs rather than rely on the figures first announced.

The Eight Year Road to Planning Approval

Getting St. Regis Las Dunas to its current stage took more than eight years, including a change to regional town planning rules that the Junta de Andalucia approved in November 2024 after several rounds of revisions. Marbella town hall then granted an urbanisation licence on 12 May 2026, covering the infrastructure works needed before construction of the hotel and residences themselves can begin.

That licence is an important step but not the final one, since the infrastructure permit and the building permits for the hotel and residences are separate processes. We track these approvals so our clients don’t have to, following each filing and licence as it moves through the Junta and the town hall so that anyone with an interest in the area hears about real progress rather than rumour.

Marbella has tightened how it handles larger applications in recent years, something we wrote about in our piece on the building licence threshold the town hall now applies to bigger schemes. An eight year approval process sounds slow in isolation, but it is broadly consistent with how long other large seafront and hillside schemes in Marbella have taken to clear both regional and municipal planning stages.

Marbella’s Wider Planning Push on the East Side

This project is moving forward against the backdrop of Marbella’s new general plan, which the council gave definitive approval on 18 September 2026 and which was published in the regional gazette on 9 October 2026. We have covered that plan in detail elsewhere, including in our piece on the first changes it brought in on day one and our look at the roughly 53 million square metres it reclassified across the municipality.

The practical effect for the east side of town is that large scale schemes which had been waiting on planning certainty are now able to move forward. St. Regis Las Dunas is one example, but it follows a pattern already visible at Four Seasons, Waldorf Astoria and the branded residences being developed with Hyatt, all of which have brought international hotel operators into Marbella’s luxury residential market over the past couple of years.

Taken together, these schemes point to a wider shift that we have also tracked in our piece on the Golden Triangle and Malaga’s high end property market, where international capital and global hospitality brands are increasingly treating Marbella as a long term base rather than a one off project. East Marbella has been a particular beneficiary of that shift, since it offered the kind of large, contiguous plots that the more built up central districts simply no longer have.

Ecologistas Malaka and the Dune Debate

Not everyone welcomes the scheme. The environmental group Ecologistas Malaka has objected to the plans, warning that construction on this stretch could damage a dune ecosystem it considers important to protect.

Its spokesman, Javier de Luis, has pointed out that around 90% of the coastline between Cabopino and central Marbella is already built on, and he has called what remains undeveloped at Las Dunas something of a miracle for having survived this long. The urbanisation licence granted in May 2026 covers infrastructure only, so these objections will likely resurface as the building permits for the hotel and residences themselves move through the approval process over the coming months.

Objections of this kind are a normal part of how large coastal schemes proceed in Spain, and they do not change the underlying planning status of land that has been classified as buildable for years. We report the opposition as part of the full picture rather than take a side on it, since the outcome will ultimately be decided through the licensing process rather than through public debate alone.

What a 2031 Opening Means for East Marbella

An opening in 2031 gives the scheme a long runway, and no construction start date has been confirmed yet. That timeline is not unusual for a project of this size, where infrastructure works, building permits and the construction programme itself can each take a year or more before doors open.

For the wider district, a confirmed five star operator and a budget of this scale tend to lift confidence in everything nearby, from smaller residential plots to existing resale stock. Buyers who want to understand how announcements like this one have tended to filter through pricing over several years can find useful context in our Marbella property market report, which tracks how similar schemes have moved values in comparable districts previously.

A five year gap between now and the stated opening also gives current owners and prospective buyers time to make decisions calmly rather than in a rush. We would rather talk clients through what a scheme like this typically means over that kind of timeframe than let a headline investment figure do the talking on its own.

We will be watching for the building permits that have to follow the infrastructure licence, since those filings tend to give the clearest signal of when construction will actually begin. Clients who want to hear about that the moment it happens, rather than finding out well after the fact, are welcome to ask us to flag it directly rather than checking planning portals themselves.

Las Chapas in the Wider East Marbella Market

Las Chapas has always had an identity slightly separate from central Marbella, closer in feel to the quieter stretches toward Cabopino than to the density around the port and the old town. A project of this scale, backed by a global operator and a budget of more than 500 million euros, adds a new reference point for what the area can support, even with construction still years away.

Buyers weighing up the district now, whether for a long term home or an investment tied to future growth, often start with our Marbella buyers guide or tell us directly what they are after through our short planning tool, which we then match against what is realistically available in Las Chapas and the surrounding area. Those considering a property that is still on paper, as many of the units in this scheme will be for some years yet, may also find it useful to read our guide to buying off plan before committing to anything at this early stage.

We expect interest in Las Chapas to keep building steadily rather than spike overnight, since so much of what happens next depends on building permits that have not yet been filed. In the meantime, our own listings for the area give a grounded sense of what is already on the market, well before the first St. Regis Las Dunas residence is ever offered for sale.