How many hotels and short-stay accommodation providers are in Saudi Arabia?
Hotels, furnished apartments, resorts and other short-stay accommodation.
30.6K
active registrations list hotels & short-stay accommodation activities — 2.1% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
30,593 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list hotels & short-stay accommodation activities as of 16 September 2026 — 2.1% of all classified registrations, the 35th-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
8,191 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +48.1% on 2024, faster than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (9,437), Makkah (5,413), Jeddah (4,219) lead. Relative to its size, Makkah is the most concentrated: hotels and short-stay accommodation providers make up 3.6× the share they hold nationally.
62.4% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 100,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 30,593
- 2.1% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 8,191
- +48.1% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 62.4%
- 19,100 of 30,593
- Median company capital
- SAR 100k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where hotels and short-stay accommodation providers are registered
Column height: hotels and short-stay accommodation providers by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh9,4371.0×
- Makkah5,4133.6×
- Jeddah4,2191.3×
- Madinah2,2351.9×
- Dammam8920.7×
- Taif7771.2×
- Khobar6431.0×
- Abha4901.6×
- Khamis Mushait3650.7×
- Tabuk3540.7×
Concentration compares the sector's share of a city's registrations with its share nationally; 1.0× is average. Highlighted cities are above 1.15×.
Hotels & short-stay accommodation: registrations by year of creation
Still-active registrations by the year they were created, 2015–2025. Older years read lower because cancelled registrations drop out.
Most common activities
Registrations listing each national activity code
- Wedding and event halls with accommodation4,769Activity code 551050
- Serviced apartments4,586Activity code 551025
- Hotel apartments3,931Activity code 551022
- Tourist accommodation management3,288Activity code 551081
- Hotels2,871Activity code 551011
- Resorts2,531Activity code 551044
- Holiday homes (chalets)1,959Activity code 551041
- Commercial rest houses (istiraha)1,632Activity code 551042
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- LLC18,54160.6%
- Sole proprietorship11,46037.5%
- JSC4161.4%
- SJSC890.3%
- General partnership310.1%
- Foreign branch280.1%
- Limited partnership230.1%
- GCC branch5<0.1%
Common questions
How many hotels and short-stay accommodation providers are there in Saudi Arabia?
30,593 active commercial registrations list hotels & short-stay accommodation activities as of 16 September 2026, according to Ministry of Commerce data. A registration can list several activities, so it may also count in related sectors.
Which city has the most hotels and short-stay accommodation providers?
Riyadh, with 9,437 — 30.8% of the national total. Makkah follows with 5,413.
Is the number of hotels and short-stay accommodation providers growing?
8,191 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +48.1% on 2024, faster than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in hotels & short-stay accommodation in Saudi Arabia?
Most activities are open to 100% foreign ownership with a MISA investment licence, though some carry conditions such as minimum capital, a Saudi partner or sector-regulator approval. Alpha Consultancy confirms the conditions for your exact activity code before you apply.
Figures are Alpha Consultancy's analysis of the Ministry of Commerce's open datasets on the Saudi Open Data Platform (open.data.gov.sa): the register of active commercial registrations (CRs) as of 16 September 2026.
Active CRsinclude main and branch registrations, as in the Ministry's own totals. Registered in a period counts CRs created in that period that were still active on 16 September 2026; registrations since cancelled are not in the source file, so older periods read lower than the number originally issued.
Partial quarter. The Ministry's Q3 2026 file is labelled as the quarter end but only contains registrations created up to 16 September 2026, so every figure here is as of that date and the latest quarter in the charts (marked *) is incomplete.
Sector figures cover the 1,443,322 active registrations (74.7%) that appear in the Ministry of Commerce's activity association file, which lists activities for registrations created up to 31 December 2025. Registrations created after that date are not yet classified. A registration counts once in each sector it is active in, so sectors overlap.
No individual business is identified on these pages; only aggregate counts are published.
Starting a business in hotels & short-stay accommodation?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.