Saudi Arabia will be home to the world’s second tallest building when the 577-metre Makkah Clock Royal Tower is finished in August this year.

It will be 59 metres taller than the 508-metre tall Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan, but still 251 metres shorter than the 828-metre tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

The tower will also be the world’s tallest hotel, some 244 metres taller than the Rose Rayhaan by Rotana tower in Dubai.

The Makkah Clock Royal Tower is being built by the local Saudi Binladin Group (SBG) and construction on 70 of the hotel’s 76 storeys has now been completed. Fit-out on the first 20 storeys is also complete. One of the key features of the tower’s design is 40-metre high by 40-metre wide clocks that can be seen from up to 17 kilometres away.    

The hotel itself also includes a medical facility, a VIP floor and six royal floors which are reserved for the Saudi royal family and visiting heads of state.   

Makkah Clock Royal Tower is part of the 4.5 million-square-metre, seven-building Abraaj al-Bayt complex.

The complex will be managed by Toronto-based Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, which is owned by a joint venture of Kingdom Holding Company and US-based Colony Capital. Abraaj al-Bayt will feature seven towers, a 200-outlet retail mall and a medical facility. SBG is the contractor for the entire development.

The towers include:

• Swissotel Makkah (1,575 rooms)
• Makkah Clock Royal Tower (858 rooms)
• Zam Zam Grand Suites (431 rooms)
• Movenpick Makkah (410 rooms)
• Rihan Rotana (about 400 rooms)
• Raffles Makkah Palace (212 rooms)
• Tower 7 (to be determined) 

Three of the hotels are already operational. They are the Movenpick, Rihan Rotana and the Zam Zam Grand Suites. Zam Zam Grand Suites was the first complete building in the development and has been operational since 2006.

Raffles Makkah is scheduled to open in July 2010 with Makkah Clock Royal Tower to follow in August. Swissotel is scheduled to open in February 2011.  

Built adjacent to what is considered the holiest site in Islam’s Sunni tradition, the Abraaj al-Bayt development will offer more than 4,100 rooms to Makkah’s 1.6 million annual religious pilgrims.

Abraaj al-Bayt is owned by Riyadh’s Kingdom Holding Company. Kingdom is planning to build an even taller tower as part of its Jeddah Kingdom City development.

It has received proposals from contractors and architects for the 1-kilometre-high tower, which will be the tallest building in the world (MEED 5:1:10).