Makkah hotel rooms pass 300,000 as Umrah sets the pace

Makkah had more than 300,000 licensed hotel rooms in Q1 2025, up 41% on a year earlier. Demand here runs on a calendar the state sets. Hajj is capped by quota, so the growth comes from Umrah, which brought about 20.67 million visits in the first half of 2025.

GASTAT also publishes a quarterly occupancy rate and room rate for Makkah city, and few people use them. In Q1 2026 the city ran at 59.9% occupancy on SAR 356 a night. What nobody publishes is the shape of demand inside the quarter. At asset level, the only public operating record comes from two listed companies, Jabal Omar and Makkah Construction and Development.

Key figures at a glance

How big is the Makkah hotel market?

The Ministry of Tourism counted more than 300,000 licensed rooms in Makkah in Q1 2025, up 41% on Q1 2024, across more than 1,160 establishments (SPA, 1 June 2025). In 2024 alone, licensed rooms had grown 64% to more than 268,000, the highest count in the Kingdom (SPA, 10 March 2025).

Those growth rates need care. Licensed facilities rose 80% in 2024, to more than 1,000 (SPA, 9 March 2025). No city builds 64% more hotel stock in a year. Most of the jump is existing rooms getting licensed during the Ministry's inspection campaigns.

So this is the best public supply count we have, but it measures what is licensed, not what was built. These are also licensed rooms, not hotel keys, and the two differ in towers with many suites. See how the industry counts hotel keys before comparing against any operator's brochure number.

Demand arrives on a schedule

Hajj 2026 drew 1,707,301 pilgrims, and 1,546,655 of them came from abroad (GASTAT census, 26 May 2026). There were 1,673,230 in 2025 (GASTAT) and 1,833,164 in 2024 (GASTAT via SPA). The numbers barely move because the state sets a quota.

Umrah is where the growth is. GASTAT counted 15,222,497 Umrah performers in Q1 2025, with external performers up 10.7% year on year to 6,523,630 (GASTAT), then 5,443,393 in Q2 2025 (GASTAT). Together that makes 20,665,890 in H1 2025, roughly twelve times the whole Hajj. For the full year, the Pilgrim Experience Program's annual report put foreign Umrah performers at 16.92 million in 2024, up 101% from 2022 (via Gulf News).

For anyone underwriting a Makkah hotel, the Umrah calendar matters more than Hajj. It is also very uneven. Q1 2025, which included Ramadan, was 2.8 times the Q2 count.

Hajj 2025 also brought in a support workforce of 420,070 people (GASTAT). They need beds too, and the pilgrim figures do not count them.

What the two listed operators show

At asset level, the public record is two Tadawul listings. Makkah Construction and Development Co. (Tadawul 4100) reported H1 2025 revenue of SAR 624 million, up 16%, and net income of SAR 294 million, up 15% (MCDC). Its Hajj-services arm served more than 64,000 pilgrims in H1 2025, against roughly 8,400 a year earlier. Its mall was 99% let, with average lease rates up 16%.

Jabal Omar Development Co. (Tadawul 4250) reports tower by tower, not as a portfolio. The published tower counts:

• Phase 3 twin towers (completed): 2,160 hotel rooms (JODC)
• Jumeirah Jabal Omar Makkah, four towers: 696 rooms and 337 suites (JODC)
• Address Jabal Omar Makkah, two towers: 1,484 accommodations (Forbes Travel Guide)
• Rotana Jabal Omar: 655 rooms and suites, scheduled for Q4 2025 (JODC press release, November 2025)
• Sofitel Jabal Omar: 1,141, scheduled for Q4 2026 (same release)

Omran estimate: Jabal Omar's rooms. JODC does not publish a portfolio total, and the "roughly 7,800 rooms" figure that circulates is not in its disclosures. Adding the six tower counts above gives 2,160 + 696 + 337 + 1,484 + 655 + 1,141 = 6,473 rooms and suites, open and planned. Treat it as a minimum. Its other towers have no published counts we could confirm.

JODC's recent accounts sit behind restricted exchange pages, so we quote none of the profit figures going around. For how to read these companies, see our guide to Saudi REIT and listed-developer disclosures.

The next wave of rooms

The next supply comes from a whole corridor: the King Abdulaziz Road (KAAR) project, which runs more than 1.2 million sqm of new development along a pedestrian boulevard into the Grand Mosque, per Sixense, an engineering contractor on the project (Sixense). The hotels announced on it include a three-tower Hilton Garden Inn with 1,560 guest rooms and a 392-suite Embassy Suites by Hilton, both confirmed in Hilton's own expansion release (Hilton), plus a 380-room Kempinski at a minimum 42 sqm per key (Kempinski via Hotel News Resource).

We leave out Masar and Thakher. The sizes quoted for them come from sources we could not check against an official one. Rua Al Madinah, the Madinah programme, does publish its own target: 30 million visitors to Madinah by 2030 (Rua Al Madinah). The broader state pipeline is mapped in our Saudi giga-projects review.

Supply near the Haram also depends on the Third Saudi Expansion, because hotel rooms there track how many people the mosque can hold. The expansion grows the footprint 3.8x and the prayer area 2.3x (Ministry of Finance via SPA, June 2024).

In absolute terms, the footprint goes from 414,000 sqm to 1.564 million sqm, and the prayer area from 390,000 sqm to 912,000 sqm.

What the official data shows, and what it misses

GASTAT's quarterly hotel release gives Makkah city its own row, and the figures are not what most people expect. In Q1 2026 Makkah ran at 59.9% occupancy, against 84.0% in Al-Madinah. Its average room rate was SAR 356 before VAT and municipal fees. That is below Jeddah (SAR 473) and Dammam (SAR 471) outside the Hajj season (GASTAT, Tables 2.8 and 2.11). Where Makkah does lead is length of stay: 5.62 nights, against 2.47 in Riyadh (Table 2.20). Two cities with the same occupancy but stays 2.3 to 1 apart need different revenue models.

What is missing is the curve inside each quarter. A three-month average hides the Hajj fortnight and the last ten nights of Ramadan, and it mixes them with the quiet weeks. So the peak-night uplift every feasibility model needs is not public. It exists only as anecdote or in private broker surveys, which we do not use (see our methodology).

Omran estimate: what the quarterly average hides. Occupancy in Makkah region slipped from 61.0% to 59.5% between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, while stays stayed above five nights (GASTAT, Table 2.22). A quarter with a Ramadan peak and a quiet spell after it produces a middling average. The published 59.9% is below the peak weeks and above the quiet ones, and probably no single week ran at it. We hold a weekly split internally but do not publish it, because nobody could rebuild it from a public file.

What we can build is what this page puts together: licensed supply with the one-off jump taken out, a demand calendar from GASTAT, tower counts from the listed companies, and clear minimums where no total exists. Request the underlying Makkah supply-demand table, or scope a briefing against your own project's assumptions.

FAQ

How many hotel rooms are there in Makkah? More than 300,000 licensed hospitality rooms as of Q1 2025, up 41% year on year, across more than 1,160 establishments (Ministry of Tourism via SPA). This counts licences, not buildings, and part of the growth is existing rooms getting licensed.

How many pilgrims performed Hajj in 2026? 1,707,301, per GASTAT's census published 26 May 2026, of whom 1,546,655 came from outside the Kingdom. The state sets a quota, so the number barely moves: 1,673,230 in 2025 and 1,833,164 in 2024.

What is the Makkah hotel occupancy rate? 59.9% in Q1 2026, for Makkah city, on GASTAT's Tourism Establishments Statistics release of 2 July 2026 (Table 2.8). That is below Al-Madinah city at 84.0% and Jiddah governorate at 60.8%. It is a quarterly average across a peak and a quiet spell, so no single week ran at that level.

Why are Makkah hotel prices so high in peak season? Because demand bunches up on set dates. 1.7 million Hajj pilgrims arrive within days of each other, and the Ramadan quarter has roughly three times the next quarter's Umrah visits (GASTAT Q1 vs Q2 2025). GASTAT's average rate for Makkah city was SAR 356 in Q1 2026 (Table 2.11), but a quarterly average cannot show a ten-night peak.

How fast is Makkah hotel supply growing? Licensed rooms went from more than 268,000 at end-2024 (up 64% on 2023) to more than 300,000 by Q1 2025 (up 41% year on year). Announced additions include 1,141 rooms at Sofitel Jabal Omar (Q4 2026 target) and 2,332 rooms and suites across three branded KAAR-corridor hotels (Hilton Garden Inn, Embassy Suites by Hilton, Kempinski), among others.

Sources

• GASTAT, Hajj 2026 census (1,707,301): link
• GASTAT, Hajj 2025 (1,673,230): link
• GASTAT via SPA, Hajj 2024 (1,833,164): link
• GASTAT, Hajj 2025 workforce (420,070): link
• GASTAT, Umrah Q1 2025 (15,222,497): link
• GASTAT, Umrah Q2 2025 (5,443,393): link
• Pilgrim Experience Program via Gulf News, foreign Umrah 2024 (16.92m): link
• Ministry of Tourism via SPA, Makkah rooms Q1 2025 (300,000+, +41%): link
• Ministry of Tourism via SPA, Makkah rooms 2024 (268,000+, +64%): link
• Ministry of Tourism via SPA, Makkah facilities 2024 (1,000+, +80%): link
• MCDC, H1 2025 results: link
• JODC, Phase 3 (2,160 rooms): link
• JODC, Jumeirah Jabal Omar (696 rooms, 337 suites): link
• JODC press release, Rotana (655) and Sofitel (1,141): link
• Forbes Travel Guide, Address Jabal Omar (1,484): link
• Sixense, KAAR scope (1.2m sqm): link
• Hilton, KAAR hotels (1,560 + 392): link
• Kempinski via Hotel News Resource, Kempinski Hotel Makkah (380): link
• Ministry of Finance via SPA, Grand Mosque Third Saudi Expansion: link
• Rua Al Madinah Holding, 30m Madinah visitors by 2030: link