BERLIN — Saudi Arabia’s tourism giga projects have been designed to meet demand of the future, according to Imran Changezi, development senior director at Diriyah Company.
The group is overseeing the $63.2 billion cultural and lifestyle Diriyah Gate development including 28 luxury hotels and resorts. Changezi said Riyadh’s current hotel inventory of 20-25,000 keys was “barely meeting the demands today” with average occupancy of around 77-78 per cent.
“It’s already bursting at the seams with a very limited supply,” he explained during a panel discussion today (17 May) chaired by founder and managing director of Strategic Hotel Consulting, Tea Ros, at the International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF) in Berlin.
As part of its Vision 2030, the Kingdom is aiming to host 100 million tourists by 2030.
“We’re trying to build our capacity slowly… over the next six or seven years in order to meet that demand,” said Changezi, referring to the Kingdom’s world-leading pipeline of 42,000 hotel rooms under construction. The Vision 2030 outlines a target of 310,000 hotel rooms by 2030 with an investment size of $110 billion.
Majed AlGhanim, managing director at the Ministry of Investment, meanwhile, said that despite the huge scale and ambition, there was room for “all types of investors”, with the variety of projects set to attract different types of guests as well as different types of investors.
“There is room for small investors, SMEs, micro investments,” he said. “We’re starting from a place where new destinations are being developed and this opens the door for investors who are coming in from different parts of the value chain.”
Earlier today, Minor Hotels announced a strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Tourism Development Fund to develop and operate high-quality hospitality and lifestyle projects, with a focus on mountain and wellness resorts and urban hotels.
The partnership will see the development of multiple hospitality projects over the next couple of years under the group’s Anantara, Avani, Tivoli and Oaks brands, with the first project expected to be announced in the second half of this year. Plans to bring its Anantara brand to Diriyah were revealed last year.
Meanwhile, another of the projects under development, the Red Sea Project, has openings including a Grand Hyatt and Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, on the cards.