Grand Mosque projects to boost tourism
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The Saudi Arabian government continues to invest billions of Riyals into various infrastructure and hospitality-related projects in order to boost tourism, especially tourism for religious purposes.
A total of 100 towers worth SAR 18 billion are currently under construction near the Grand Mosque in Makkah. Once completed, the city will see an addition of over 24,480 hotel rooms, apart from other infrastructure facilities. On the other hand, the King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, the closest airport to Makkah, is undergoing a capacity expansion from 12 million to 14 million passengers per year. Additionally, SAR 62 billion is being invested for the Makkah Metro project to cater to the requirements of the steadily increasing number of tourists visiting Saudi Arabia for religious reasons.
Among various major developments taking shape in Makkah is the Jabal Al Kaaba project which will deliver 1743 hotel rooms during the second quarter of 2013 through the ‘Anjum Hotel’ alone, which is rapidly nearing completion and represents 7.3% of the total new hotel accommodation capacity that will be offered in Makkah. On completion of the whole project an additional 8,500 rooms will be added, through the cluster of hotels under the ‘Anjum Hotels’ brand which represents 34.7% of the total capacity.
Yousef Abdul Latif Jameel, chairman, ALJREIC, said: “We are looking to tap into the more than 13 million Muslim travelers going on Hajj and Ummrah by 2019, up from 3.8 million during the last two years.”