AlUla Is Tripling Its Hotel Rooms to Chase 1 Million Visitors by 2030
Photo Credit: A shot of Hegra in AlUla, Saudi Arabia. Used for illustrative purposes. Unsplash / Hatem Boukhit
Skift Take
The destination has a real demand story. The question is whether the room pipeline can keep pace.
AlUla drew 320,000 visitors in 2025, up 15% year-on-year, and is targeting 1 million by 2030 — a goal that requires tripling its current hotel inventory and sustaining international demand through a regional conflict that has already slowed parts of its development pipeline.
Phillip Jones, chief tourism officer at the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), said the destination currently operates 7 hotels with 1,000 keys and plans to reach close to 3,000 keys by 2030. The Hyatt Place opens in October. An Autograph Collection property is under construction. An Aman Hegra and a Six Senses have been announced.
“One of the challenges due to the geopolitical crisis is that it slowed some of the projects down because of the uncertainty,” Jones said at the Future Hospitality Summit in Riyadh T
