King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) plans to build ten hotels as part of a plan to boost tourism at the economic zone, according to Fahd al-Rasheed, managing director and CEO of KAEC.

Speaking at MEED’s Arabian Hotel Investment Conference (AHIC) in Dubai on 4 April, Al-Rasheed said the economic zone plans to build 10 hotels over the next six years, offering a total of 2,000 rooms.

“We have the firepower to build half of them, but we decided it would be better if we brought in a lot of partners,” he said. “So we are going to build at least four of the hotels on our own and the rest with partners. We will be announcing two partnerships in the next two months that you will hear about shortly.”

Al-Rasheed said the KAEC hospitality market is expected to grow from an annual rate of 71,000 room nights in 2014 to 550,000 by 2020. Currently, the Bay La Sun Hotel and Marina is the first of the 10 hotels planned in the city.

KAEC is the first of four economic city projects planned for the kingdom. The scheme, which is one of the largest private sector initiatives in the Middle East, is being built at Rabigh, 100 kilometres north of Jeddah. KAEC includes King Abdullah Port, which started operations in January and is now one of the 10 largest seaports in the world. Another major component is the Industrial Valley, which has attracted more than 60 national and international industrial companies, some of which are already operational.