New flagship Kempinski hotel planned in Makkah

The property is being developed in partnership with Umm Al Qura for Development and Construction Company (UAQ).

Kempinski Hotel Makkah will feature 380 rooms and suites as well as an all-day dining restaurant and a speciality restaurant serving Levantine cuisine. There will also be a coffee lounge at the sky lobby, plus a ballroom and conference rooms for meetings and events.

The new hotel will be prominently located in King Abdul Aziz Road (KAAR), a new urban lifestyle hub, conceptualised to serve as a luxuriant gateway particularly for pilgrims with state of the art transit and development options. The project will offer a mix of high-end hospitality, commercial centres and restaurants as well as business and residential areas to serve both the local Makkah population and Hajj & Umrah visitors. The hotel will be located in a prime area of the new boulevard, covering the closest point to the Holy Haram mosque. It will also be linked to the luxurious mall on the KAAR. The KAAR project is directly linked with the Haramain High-Speed Railway station that links Makkah to Jeddah and Madinah, which will complement another new Kempinski property in Al Madina that is to open in 2022.

“With our newly signed hotel project in Makkah, we will be present in the most important destination within Saudia Arabia and the world’s holiest city of Islam. We are proud that, together with Umm Al Qura for Development & Construction, a locally very well-established and highly respected real estate company, we will play a major role in shaping the all-new KAAR boulevard which links our new project in Makkah with our previously signed property in Al Madina. A presence in the two cities will allow us to boost exponentially the performance of both hotels while merging very well with the country’s vision for 2030”, said Martin R. Smura, chief executive officer Kempinski Hotels and chairman of the Kempinski Management Board.

Yasser AbuAteek, managing director and chief executive officer of Umm Al Qura, said: “We are proud to announce that we will build up Kempinski Hotel Makkah as one of the major milestones we are taking towards our vision to serving the people of Makkah and its visitors to assure we offer them the best possible options for lifestyle enhancement; it will be an icon within our envisioned 1.25 million-sq-m New Makkah district. What counted most for us was the expertise of managing hotels and residences from a European perspective integrated with local and cultural refinements and considerations. Kempinski has not only proven on a global scale, but specifically in the Middle East, where the company’s reputation is impeccable. Therefore, we are pleased to take the next step with them and leave a joint footprint as part of our mega project.”

Both Kempinski and UAQ leadership agreed on exploring the possibilities of integrating sustainable and green building requirements to assure that the hotel is in line with global standards of sustainability and to be environmentally friendly.

The addition of Kempinski Hotel Makkah to the Kempinski portfolio is part of the company’s continued expansion into the Middle East markets. A few years ago the brand opened the Kempinski Al Othman Hotel Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia, a unique landmark property consisting of two towers with 20 floors and 218 rooms in total, with the Skybridge lobby lounge providing uninterrupted views over the whole city. Currently, Kempinski manages six properties in the Gulf, the most recent of which is Emerald Palace Kempinski Dubai. - TradeArabia News Service