Hilton Worldwide is
expanding in the Middle East. The hotel chain is planning on opening more hotels in Mecca to take advantage of all the religious tourists needing a place to stay. Mecca is the birthplace of Islam and many Muslims make religious pilgrimages there. But accommodations in Saudi Arabia are insufficient for the traffic, according to Hilton.
"We don't have enough of a supply of hotel rooms," Shuja Zaidi, Hilton's vice president of projects in Saudi Arabia, said in an interview in Riyadh yesterday. "There is a tremendous amount of money going into Mecca."
Hoteliers and property developers are tapping new business opportunities in the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina as the Saudi government seeks to accommodate more pilgrims. Saudi Arabia is building a $5.3 billion rail line that can transport 3 million people between the two cities and is expanding Jeddah international airport to handle 30 million passengers by 2012.
Over the next 10 years, developers and hotel companies will invest as much as 150 billion riyals ($40 billion) in Mecca, Zaidi said. Kingdom Holding Co., the investment company controlled by billionaire Prince Alwaleed, will open a five-star hotel with 1,000 rooms, restaurants and retail space.
Jabal Omar Development Co., a real-estate developer in Mecca, is building 27 hotels with a combined 15,000 rooms, with the first to open in 2011. There will be multiple Hilton properties there, Zaidi said.
"Every major hotel brand in the world will be present in Jabal Omar,” Zaidi said. "Hilton is a small portion of that."
As Paris Hilton might say, religious tourism is huge. Hilton Worldwide was purchased by the Blackstone Group in 2007.
