Some of the defining features of the Abraj Kudai: a $3.5-billion price tag, 10,000 rooms, 12 towers and helipads. The hotel in Mecca, Saudi Arabia will be the largest ever built when it opens in 2017.
The Saudi architecture firm Dar Al-Handasah is designing the gargantuan site which will stretch across 1.4 million square metres, roughly 2 kilometres south of the Holy Maram site in Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The hotel, funded by the kingdom’s Ministry of Finance, will also house a six-storey car park for 3,000 cars, a bus station, shopping mall, over 70 restaurants, and a convention centre.
The bus station, according to the architectural firm’s website, will serve to transport pilgrims from the hotel to the Holy Maram site.
But Irfin Al-Alawai, the director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, said the onslaught of luxury hotels in the area is making it too expensive for regular people.
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“The city is turning into Mecca-hattan,” he said in an interview with The Guardian. “Everything has been swept away to make way for the incessant march of luxury hotels, which are destroying the sanctity of the place and pricing normal pilgrims out.”
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Five of the floors inside the twelve towers will be dedicated for the exclusive use of the royal family.
The towers sit upon a 10-storey base and at least four are topped with helipads.
The 10,000 rooms will also make the hotel the largest in the world, beating out the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada which only boasts a paltry 6,852 rooms.
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