Saudi hotel developer reveals ambitious plans for mammoth cruising hotel resort

The Saudi Arabian hotel developer Al-Othaim Investment has announced ambitious plans to build a mammoth cruising hotel resort featuring a shopping mall, apartments, villas, and even a commercial office complex.

The massive vessel, covering an area of around 77,000sqm, or around four times the size of Royal Caribbean’s Icon-class cruise ship (the largest in the world), will have a crew of more than 4,000.

The 120-room five star hotel aboard the vessel, if it is ever built, will feature 120 rooms and 156 luxury apartments, while the office complex will have a floorspace of 9,000sqm across six floors.

A separate part of the vessel will offer 256 residential units, and 16 palacial villas, while multiple entertainment options and experiences will be available throughout the ship, primarily within the onboard shopping mall. 

The company said in a post on X that this move falls in line with its expansion strategy, which aims to launch several projects in various regions of the Kingdom, in-line with the country’s Vision 2030 diversification goals.  

The vessel, if construction is completed as planned, will be the largest cruise ship ever built, with a gross tonnage roughly four to five times that of the current largest cruise ship in the world, the Icon class of Royal Caribbean International.

Set to be called Al-Othaim Cruise, the vessel will carry up to 50,000 passengers, and will even accommodate more than 1,600 cars. The vessel’s split superstructure will run its full length and will accommodate the hotel, offices, apartments and villas, while the mall will be located within the massive hull of the vessel.

The announcement comes amid a rapidly burgeoning cruise industry in Saudi Arabia, driven by the country’s soverign wealth fund PIF, which launched Cruise Saudi in 2019 to drive the development of cruise ports across the country, and establish Saudi Arabia as a global cruise destination.

Cruise Saudi has also invested in the development of a homegrown cruise line for the Arab world called AROYA Cruises, which will exclusively target the Middle Eastern source market, with onboard experiences and amenities designed specifically for Arab tastes.

AROYA Cruises will launch in the Red Sea this coming December, while a launch date has not been set for the Al-Othaim Cruise project, and it is not clear if construction has even begun.