The world's biggest hotel yet is coming
Las Vegas’ status as home to the biggest hotels in the world is about to be toppled by a mammoth new development currently under construction in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Set to open in 2017, the Abraj Kudai hotel will feature 10,000 rooms, 70 restaurants and a total usable floorspace of around 1.4 million square metres, dwarfing all before it. By comparison The Venetian and The Palazzo in Las Vegas, which operate as a single hotel offer 7117 rooms.
The project will cost around upwards of $5 billion and has been designed to look like a desert fortress. The architecture has also followed the wedding-cake pastiche style of the city’s recent hotel boom with cornice piled upon cornice. Four helipads will cluster around one of the largest domes in the world, and the whole complex will rise 45 levels into the sky above the deserts of Mecca.
The lofty scheme also comprises 12 towers perched atop a 10-storey podium. Two of the towers will offer five-star facilities while the other ten will provide four-star accommodation. Five of the floors will be strictly off limits to guests and reserved entirely for the Saudi royal family.
The Abraj Kudai will be an entire city of luxury, catering to the increasingly high expectations of affluent visitors from the Gulf. There will be a shopping mall, food courts, a bus station and a huge ballroom to service the millions of people that converge on the city for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
Located in the Manafia district, 1.5kms south of the Grand Mosque, the complex is funded by the Saudi Ministry of Finance and designed by the Dar Al-Handasah group, a 7,000-strong global construction conglomerate that is involved in everything from designing cities in Kazakhstan to airports in Dubai.
The Abraj Kudai is not the only new hotel planned for Mecca. Hilton, the worldwide brand, is developing the Conrad Makkah, due to open in 2016, which, once built, will also help to meet the demands for a wider variety of accommodation from the rising number of pilgrims visiting Saudi Arabia every year.
Photo source: Dar Al-Handasah architects