The Kingdom, under its Vision 2030 program, wants to expand areas such as hotels and infrastructure. A major conglomerate is teaming up with a Texas-based family office to develop a hospitality platform that will create a network of 50 brand-name business hotels over the next few years.     

Late last week, US-based Patel Family Office and Saudi Arabia’s Abdel Hadi A Al-Qahtani & Sons, an industrial conglomerate, signed a $1 billion deal to establish a hotels business to tap into the Kingdom’s hospitality growth program.

Saudi Arabia wants to become a global tourism and business hub under its Vision 2030 program. Besides its infrastructure build-out, Saudi Arabia is also hosting international events including Expo 2030 and FIFA World Cup 2034.

The AYARA hospitality platform will develop a network of 50 international brand-name business hotels across Saudi Arabia by 2029, the parties said in a statement last week. 

“AYARA will deliver standardized, branded business hotels at scale, serving the Kingdom’s booming corporate and business travel sector,” the statement said.

Patel Family Office, a third-generation single-family office based in Dallas, Texas, will work with Abdelmalik Tariq Al-Qahtani Company [ATQ] Hospitality Group, an affiliated company within AHQ, to launch and operate AYARA.

The AYARA network’s scale puts the Patel Family Office-AHQ partnership among the largest individual hotel investment deals in Saudi Arabia to date, the groups said. 

The partnership deal was signed at FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami.

The AYARA platform will serve corporate travelers, project teams, consultants and regional headquarters across Saudi Arabia. By 2029, AYARA is expected to provide between 5,000 and 7,000 rooms across economic corridors including Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, and emerging development zones like NEOM and the Red Sea region. 

“As Saudi Arabia opens its doors to the world, its tourism and infrastructure expansion is attracting increasing global attention. The Kingdom’s transformation is creating a new category of demand for reliable, practical and standardized business hospitality,” Patel Family Office vice chairman and managing partner Lakshmi Narayanan, said.

H E Abdulmalik Tariq Al-Qahtani, CEO of AHQ and chairman of ATQ Hospitality Group, said: “It requires new partnerships and new approaches to deliver economic transformation at the unprecedented scale we are seeing in Saudi Arabia. By integrating construction, procurement and hotel operations in the AYARA platform, we are establishing a new standard for development speed and efficiency."