PHOTO: Abraj Kudai rendering (courtesy of Dar Group)
There are big hotels.
And then there are big hotels.
Saudi Arabia is planning on housing the biggest hotel of them all.
Abraj Kudai, a luxury hotel/mini-city, is expected to open in 2017 in Mecca. The massive building, complete with a central dome and four helipads, will include a whopping 10,000 rooms spread out over 12 towers (five stories will be reserved exclusively for the Saudi royal family). Two towers within the dome will rise 45 stories up into the sky over the deserts of Mecca, two towers will be 35 stories tall and eight towers will be 30 stories tall.
The 12 towers will be set on a 10-story podium, which will contain a shopping mall, food courts, its own bus station, a conference center and a luxurious ballroom. The 1.4-million-square-meter development project will also feature 70 restaurants.
All told, the development is expected to cost nearly $3.7 billion, or 13.77 billion Saudi riyals. It will be located in the Manafia area, just over a mile south of the Grand Mosque.
Just to give you an idea of how colossal Abraj Kudai will be, the biggest single hotel in terms of rooms right now is MGM Grand Las Vegas. MGM Grand Las Vegas has just over 6,000 rooms, according to STR Inc. It's hard to even imagine what a 10,000-room hotel will look like.
Dubai is largely hailed as the, ahem, mecca, if you will, of luxury and giant buildings, along with New York City and Hong Kong. Apparently, Mecca, Saudi Arabia is trying to combine them all into one single hotel.
The hotel is being funded by the Saudi Ministry of Finance and designed by major engineering and architectural global consultancy Dar Al-Handasah.
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