Las Vegas has become a city of superlatives, not the least of which is the steady growth of its room count. Somehow, Malaysia’s First World Hotel became the world’s second largest hotel property with 6,118 rooms, but four of the top five mega-hotels on earth are located along the same desert strip.
The MGM is the largest hotel on earth with ninety more rooms than the First World. Las Vegas still holds the record. Even the fifth largest hotel on earth, the Venetian comes in at over 4,000 bedrooms.
Each of the top five hotels is propelled by night life in many forms. Each hotel is open to anyone reading this column. I mean, quite literally, you can hop on a plane and if they have an available room they will let you stay at any one of the world’s largest hotels. I am, of course, stating the obvious.
But there is a new hotel coming that will drop the MGM down a peg. It will have 10,000 rooms, making it the worlds largest by about 40%. Ground has already been broken and it will open in 2017. You may want to stay there; everyone wants to tell their friends that they have stayed at the worlds largest anything.
But this hotel will be different in one important regard. It is highly unlikely you will ever be accepted as a guest. There will be no fam trips. I won’t be writing about this hotel from the inside. And if I did, it is doubtful that my story would ever reach you.
- The new “World’s Largest Hotel” will not be located along the Las Vegas strip. It will be located next to its moral opposite, in the Manafia District of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. It is a $3.5 billion project with twelve towers, its own bus station, and seventy restaurants. The architectural firm, Dar Al-Handasah has released preliminary drawings that show four helipads and twelve 45-story towers.
- The drawings I’ve seen would indicate that a traditional Saudi desert fortress has merged with something out of the Disney playbook so you have a slice of tomorrow land with classical pretentions. Think of a wedding cake that is so overdone with pink pilasters and dark blue tinted windows that it begs to be eaten just to reduce its size.
- And just who is spearheading this project – Hyatt, Marriott, or Starwood? No, at $3.5 billion you can guess that this, the largest single hotel project in history, is being funded by the Saudi Ministry of Finance on behalf of the Saudi Royal Family. You know, our close allies in the Middle East.
- If this were a Trump project, you might imagine a five-room penthouse on the upper floor. But, as in all things, the Saudis go a lot further than that. The Abraj Kudai will have quaint on-premises for the Royals – five stories of the building will be set aside for their private use.
- This hotel behemoth is not being built to attract your clients unless your particular specialty is sending your clients to Mecca for the annual Hajj or to one of the many conferences that combine to bring 22 million people to, what was once, a simple dusty town and the holiest site in Islam.
- Now I want you to imagine the context of this project. Just imagine with me, for a moment, that Travel Weekly carried a story announcing that Muslims would not be allowed in Las Vegas. Or that Christians and Jews would no longer be allowed to enter the Las Vegas strip. The ramparts of the Bellagio would, no doubt, be stormed by angry mobs.
- But this is a republic, a strange brand of democracy, and we just don’t open hotels that openly discriminate. It is unthinkable. We won’t tolerate it for a moment.
- But if you are a Jew, or a Christian, if you practice the Mennonite faith, or are a practicing atheist you will not be permitted to visit or stay in the world’s largest hotel. You see, the entire city of Makkah is free of non-believers. Non-Muslims are not permitted within the city’s borders.
- You and I are banned from this hotel and the city in which it stands. Now, dear reader, you may well ask why. Are we to believe that Classic or Apple, Trafalgar or Travcoa will not be hosting fams at the world’s largest hotel? Does this mean we can’t get there on an A&K educational? You mean to say they won’t even let Rick Steves into town?
- All true, Makkah and Madinah have been designated by their government as sacred centers where prayer and pilgrims must be free of outside influences.
- The Saudis quote scripture on this point citing a verse in the Quran that includes the phrase “Oh you who believe. The idolaters are unclean so let them not after this year”.
- This has been interpreted as applying to the Grand Mosque, but the city of Madinah was also added. Scholars have voiced suggestions that “visitors” could be allowed under Sharia Law for purposes of trade but the Saudi rulers, our allies, have decided on a strict ban of all non-believers in the city. No Southwest flights will be landing in Mecca.
- Allow me to suggest that I am not mocking this. We could use a few injections of morality to the tourist scene in Las Vegas. Perhaps a law that says you must wear a baseball cap for the purpose in which it was intended – blocking the sun with the brim forward. Or perhaps the city fathers would consider a “Maximum fifteen” tattoos per visitor.
- But our good allies, some might say our best allies in the Middle east, have adopted a policy in their holiest city that we are too “unclean” to visit.
- Given that, you might imagine that Mecca is. Today, a shining beacon for all that is holy and righteous. You would be wrong.
- Historic sites in the city have been bulldozed over to make room for high-end pilgrims who are required to visit the city at least once in their lifetime.
- Just think about that. Wouldn’t it be great if all the Catholics in the world were absolutely required to travel to the Vatican in order to walk around the building several times while requiring hotel rooms, food, and opportunities to shop. How would that impact Italy’s failing economy?
- But modern Mecca is being redesigned and enlarged to cater not to pilgrims as we might imagine the poor and downtrodden who save for a lifetime in order to take the one vacation in their lifetime, the one mandated by their religion. Mecca has become, instead, a haven to house and feed, the growing hordes of luxury travelers who will do the required trip of their faith, but who insist on staying in five-star hotels while doing it.
- The second tallest building in the world, the Abraj al-Bait Clocktower has thousands of luxury hotel rooms. Rates go as high as $6,000 per night for rooms with the best views of the Kaaba, the black cube in the center of the Mosque, which Muslims must circle on foot before eventually passing on to paradise.
- The hotel projects a lazer show at night that can be seen all over Mecca. This allows residents to see the size of the original Ottoman fort that was bulldozed for development.
- Wahhabism, the really hardline interpretation of Islam that is now guiding the march of Isis is endorsed by the Saudi government. There are no movie theaters in the country and women won’t be driving the limos that pull up to the portico at the world’s largest hotel. Wahhabism identifies religious sites as encouraging “sinful idolatry” so tearing down historic sites for new stores or hotels to serve the affluent pilgrims is justifiable. This is carried to such an extent that the home of the prophet’s first wife was destroyed to create a location for public lavatories.
- The World’s largest hotel will sit steps away from the Grand Mosque. In the immediate area, if you were allowed to visit, you would notice a Paris Hilton store as well as a Starbucks that is totally segregated by gender. The question of where a transgender latte drinker would be required to sit has, apparently, never come up.
- Mecca, that holiest of places, is being trampled by a stampede of construction, most of it directed at providing food and lodging, along with shopping, for pilgrims who will arrive by jet, in many cases, their own.
- Even the Grand Mosque itself will be undergoing a massive expansion so the prayer halls will be able to hold 7 million people at one time instead of the current 3 million. Care will, of course, be taken not to harm the largest religious structure in the world. The Kaaba, the black stone cube in the center of the Mosque that Abraham is said to have built is the exact spot that Muslims must face when saying their daily prayers. It will be protected. But there are now so many cranes at work in Mecca, so many high-rise buildings are climbing toward paradise, that some local residents can be seen facing the wrong direction while praying, their sight blocked by construction.
- And, at the center of it all, The World’s Largest Hotel will emerge from the dust. And, someday in our lifetime, I believe, an ever larger hotel will be needed to house the pilgrims. And you and I will never be allowed to check in to either one of them.
- Of course, the great irony is that elders in Mecca as well as the Islamic Heritage Research Association point out that residents now use a phrase to describe their city. They call it “Las Vegas”.
