Saudi F1 Grand Prix helps Jeddah hotel rates to record
The average daily rate at Jeddah’s hotels one day before the race was $455.39
Updated 10 December 2021
Arab News
JEDDAH: This month’s inaugural Saudi Arabian Formula 1 Grand Prix helped drive hotel room rates to record highs in Jeddah, while occupancy was at the highest level since 2018.
The average daily rate at Jeddah’s hotels on Dec. 4, one day before the race, was SR1,707.72 ($455.39), up from SR612.25 the previous week, while revenue per available room, also known as RevPAR, was SR1,517.92, both all-time highs, according to hospitality data provider STR.
Occupancy peaked at 89.2 percent on the day of the race, up from 59.8 percent the previous week, the highest since August 2018, the STR data showed.
“The special circumstances of Saudi Arabia hosting its first F1 Grand Prix, in between races held in Doha and Abu Dhabi, drove hotelier pricing confidence and overall performance to record-breaking levels,” said Philip Wooller, STR’s area director for Middle East & Africa. “The RevPAR level achieved the night before the race was the highest ever recorded in a Saudi market outside of Makkah, and when we compare with the weeks before the race, the need for such a boost was significant.”
Saudi minister at Davos urges collaboration on minerals
The reason of the tension of geopolitics is actually the criticality of the minerals
Updated 20 January 2026
Arab News
LONDON: Countries need to collaborate on mining and resources to help avoid geopolitical tensions, Saudi Arabia’s minister of industry and mineral resources told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday.
“The reason of the tension of geopolitics is actually the criticality of the minerals, the concentration in different areas of the world,” Bandar Alkhorayef told a panel discussion on the geopolitics of materials.
“The rational thing to do is to collaborate, and that’s what we are doing,” he added. “We are creating a platform of collaboration in Saudi Arabia.”
Bandar Alkhorayef, Saudi Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources
The Kingdom last week hosted the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh. Alkhorayef said the platform was launched by the government in 2022 as a contribution to the global community. “It’s very important to have a global movement, and that’s why we launched the Future Minerals Forum,” he said. “It is the most important platform of global mining leaders.”
The Kingdom has made mining one of the key pillars of its economy, rapidly expanding the sector under the Vision 2030 reform program with an eye on diversification. Saudi Arabia has an estimated $2.5 trillion in mineral wealth and the ramping up of extraction comes at a time of intense global competition for resources to drive technological development in areas like AI and renewables.
“We realized that unlocking the value that we have in our natural resources, of the different minerals that we have, will definitely help our economy to grow to diversify,” Alkhorayef said. The Kingdom has worked to reduce the timelines required to set up mines while also protecting local communities, he added. Obtaining mining permits in Saudi Arabia has been reduced to just 30 to 90 days compared to the many years required in other countries, Alkhorayef said.
“We learned very, very early that permitting is a bottleneck in the system,” he added. “We all know, and we have to be very, very frank about this, that mining doesn’t have a good reputation globally.
“We are trying to change this and cutting down the licensing process doesn’t only solve it. You need also to show the communities the impact of the mining on their lives.”
Saudi Arabia’s new mining investment laws have placed great emphasis on the development of society and local communities, along with protecting the environment and incorporating new technologies, Alkhorayef said. “We want to build the future mines; we don’t want to build old mines.”
