Abu Dhabi has many of the things that surfers hunt for in their quest for perfect waves: warm weather, year-round sun and clear water. The only thing it did not have was waves.
That changed in October 2024, when Surf Abu Dhabi opened. Offering the longest artificial wave in the world, the company hopes to turn Abu Dhabi into a global surfing destination.
The wave pool is 755 yards (690 meters) long and and you can ride a wave for up to a minute. All other wave pools are freshwater, but Surf Abu Dhabi is filled with 80 million liters of sea water pumped in from the Arabian Gulf. The water is saltier than in most other parts of the world, so Surf Abu Dhabi desalinates it slightly.
The wave is produced by an underwater wing dragged down the pool by pulleys. The wing moves the water, and the carefully shaped floor of the pool, known as the bathymetry, makes the wave break. The bathymetry of the Abu Dhabi pool, “where all the magic comes in,” is patented, says Ryan Watkins, general manager at Surf Abu Dhabi.
The technology was the brainchild of Kelly Slater, the most successful professional surfer in history. Whilst most professional surfers have a signature line of boardshorts, Slater has a line of waves. He worked with Adam Fincham, a fluid mechanics specialist at the University of Southern California, to make the perfect wave. The project was “mathematically horrendous,” one professor at USC said in an interview with Science.
The technology was first unveiled in 2015 at the Surf Ranch in California, and the World Surf League (WSL), the highest professional surfing competition, scheduled a stop at the Surf Ranch pool for the 2018 season. The WSL held an event at the Abu Dhabi pool in February 2025. In 2016, WSL Holdings, the parent company of the World Surf League, bought the Kelly Slater Wave Company, who own the technology.
The idea of the perfect wave was cemented in surfing’s psyche by “The Endless Summer,” a 1966 documentary about two Californian surfers on a round-the-world trip to find the perfect wave. Chasing summer from north to south, they end up finding it at Cape St. Francis in South Africa.
The film, to surfers, is mesmerizing — barrels speeding down the sand-bottomed point, with wave after wave lined up behind. “These waves look like they have been made by some kind of machine,” the narrator says.
Cape St Francis is famously fickle though. Developments on the cape stopped the sand from shifting its way around the point, filling in the rocks on the beach and giving the wave its shape. Cape St. Francis will never again be perfect.
But the wave at Surf Abu Dhabi is always the same. “We’ve adopted a quality over quantity methodology,” Watkins tells CNN. “We run the best waves in the world; we definitely don’t run the most waves.” Over 80% of their clients are international visitors travelling to surf the wave, and Surf Abu Dhabi is targeting the luxury travel market.
They only allow four surfers in the main pool at once on the intermediate and advanced wave, each paying AED3500 (around $950). Each surfer is guaranteed six waves, though they can get more if another surfer falls off. However, Watkins says most people prefer to rent the pool out privately at AED20,000 (close to $5,450) for 90 minutes.
Watkins says the high prices are worth it. “Ours is a 55-second-long ride from tip to tip, and you’re going to get two perfect tubes (surfing inside the barrel of a breaking wave).” Customers get coaching on the water and video reviews after.
The global surf tourism industry reached $68.3 billion in 2024, and is projected to hit $95.93 billion by 2030. Surf Abu Dhabi believes that their pool can capture the luxury element of the market. But to do so, they will have to convince customers that surfing their pool is better than surfing in the ocean.
When Felippe Bonella Dal Piero first started his luxury surf travel business, Mahalo Surf Experience, he says nobody could understand the concept. “Surfers are broke,” people kept telling him. But Dal Piero now spends his life guiding CEOs and billionaires to hidden corners of the world in search of empty waves. He has a team of meteorologists tracking storms, and when the conditions line up perfectly, he will call one of his clients for a last-minute strike mission.
A four-day trip like that starts at around $150,000. The price, Dal Piero says, is so high because “there is no margin for failure.” His clients will not want to leave their offices for bad waves, uncomfortable accommodation, or other people in the water with them. “It is really like a James Bond operation,” he tells CNN, using speedboats and seaplanes to get his clients to the best waves.
Increasingly, Dal Piero’s clients are learning to surf in wave pools. The predictability and control of the pool makes it an attractive option for time-starved professionals who do not want to chase swells, and there has been a growth of exclusive surf clubs, such as the São Paulo Surf Club in Brazil. Part of a new development in the Brazilian city, a family membership reportedly costs R$950,000 (around $174,000).
This has led to changing expectations from his customers, whose skills have been sharpened in the consistent and predictable waves of a pool, rather than the constantly changing ocean. “The ocean humbles a lot of these guys because once you are in the pool, everything is quite controlled,” Dal Piero says. Some of his clients have to be pushed into waves, lacking the paddle fitness that comes with surfing in the ocean.
His clients, he says, use wave pools because they are consistent and accessible. He even takes clients to wave pools; it is easier to work on specific skills in a controlled environment. On his way to the Maldives or Indonesia, he often stops off at Surf Abu Dhabi, using the wave pool as a warm-up.
Whilst wave pools have a place, they are no replacement, Dal Piero thinks. “Standing up on a wave and going 100 meters, that’s not surfing.” His clients come to him because they want the “connection with nature, with the rhythm of the ocean,” and they want to not be in control.
“If you are a billionaire, a CEO, you have all of your life scheduled and planned. Once you jump in the ocean, that’s all gone,” he says. “You don’t know if the next wave will be the best wave of your life or the worst wipeout of your life.”
But this lack of control puts people off the sport, Watkins thinks, and surfing in a pool makes the sport more accessible. “The oldest surfer that we’ve had is 86 years old,” he says. The safety and exclusivity of the pool make it an attractive option for CEOs and A-listers who do not want to hustle with other surfers in the ocean. Chris Hemsworth, Steve Aoki and Lewis Hamilton are regular clients are Surf Abu Dhabi, while Prince Harry and Ivanka Trump have been seen at the Surf Ranch in California.
“From a golf course perspective, we would be the Augusta,” Watkins says. Augusta National Golf Club is a notoriously exclusive course, with only around 300 members at a time. In this refined space, the New Yorker reports, bird sounds are played around the course on hidden speakers, and even the pine straw is imported.
The comparison is fitting; a few decades ago, the executives and professionals that Abu Dhabi Surf targets would have been playing golf. Now “everybody wants to be a surfer” Watkins says. But these surfers do not just want any surf. They want the perfect wave.
Slater had been dreaming about wave pools for a long time before he opened Surf Ranch. He wrote in his 2003 memoir that “surfers have dreamed of creating the ultimate wave machine. The perfect setup would take surfing to every town in America and make the sport as mainstream as soccer.”
However, there are only two pools in the world currently operating with Slater’s technology, the Surf Ranch in California, and Surf Abu Dhabi. A third is under construction in Austin, Texas. Surf Abu Dhabi declined to confirm the cost of building the pool, but Bloomberg reported it at $90 million.
Slater’s system is not the only one available. In 2024, there were 36 wave pools running around the world, and 76 more are in development. Most of these pools use different systems that require a smaller pool footprint, offering cheaper, but shorter, rides. An hour of surfing at The Wave in Bristol, UK, costs £55 ($75) for an expert session.
Everybody has a different idea of what a perfect wave is. For a beginner, it might be standing up for three seconds and riding along the face, whereas a professional might want a 30-second barrel, Watkins explains. “It’s so subjective.”
Nonetheless, all surfers chase after the ideal of the perfect wave. So has Surf Abu Dhabi made it? “We’ve made a version of it,” Watkins says.
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