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Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast is set to develop $90 billion real estate and infrastructure projects by 2030, according to an analysis by global property consultant, Knight Frank.
“With some 89,000 new homes, 250,000 square metres (sqm) of offices and nearly 1.4 million sqm metres of retail space, the city will be significantly revitalised by the end of the decade,” Faisal Durrani, Partner – Head of Middle East Research at Knight Frank, said.
According to Knight Frank’s analysis, nearly $14 billion of the total spend is dedicated to new infrastructure, including a new ‘land bridge’ that will involve the construction of 1,500 km of railway lines linking towns and cities between the eastern and western parts of Saudi while $7 billion has been earmarked for Jeddah Islamic Port expansion, including raising container capacity to 20 million TEUs.
Another contributor to the project pipeline is the government’s focus on improving and enhancing the habitability and liveability of Saudi cities.
Yazeed Hijazi, Associate Partner, Real Estate Strategy & Consulting KSA, said: “With nearly $3.3 billion earmarked for wellbeing projects, the residents of Jeddah are set to benefit from improvements to the city’s leisure, cultural, education and healthcare facilities.”
New hotels are also being planned as part of the economic transformation plans.
According to Knight Frank’s data, Jeddah has 9,300 rooms under construction or in the planning stages that are expected to be completed between now and 2030, which would bring the city's total supply to 21,000 rooms.
“The popularity of Jeddah Season and the Jeddah F1, combined with the ultra-fast and modern rail links to the Holy Cities means Jeddah’s potential as an international tourist destination are only now starting to grow,” said Durrani.
Currently, 2,700 rooms have been announced within the city’s mega projects, which represents 29 percent of the total hotel supply pipeline in the port city.
(Writing by Anoop Menon; editing by Seban Scaria)
