IHG Hotels & Resorts just made a pretty impressive promise: all six of its Luxury & Lifestyle brands will be up and running in Saudi Arabia by 2028. That’s Kimpton, InterContinental, Six Senses, Regent, Hotel Indigo, and Vignette Collection, all in one country, within the next two years.
This isn’t IHG’s first entry in the Kingdom. The company opened InterContinental Riyadh back in 1975, so this relationship has had 50 years to develop. But the pace now is different. IHG already runs 48 hotels there, with another 62 in the pipeline. That’s a lot of construction cranes.
Importance Beyond Saudi Arabia
Here’s the thing worth paying attention to: Saudi Arabia wants 150 million visitors a year by 2030. That’s not a small target, and it means the country needs hotel brands that can serve everyone from religious pilgrims to business travelers to people chasing five-star beach resorts. IHG’s answer is to cover every angle at once. Luxury travelers get Six Senses and Regent. Design-focused guests get Kimpton and Hotel Indigo. And IHG still has its bread-and-butter brands handling the volume business.
For the wider hospitality industry, this is a signal. When a company with IHG’s scale commits this hard to one market, other operators tend to take notice. Saudi Arabia has been talked about as a growth story for years. This kind of announcement is what turns talk into actual room counts.
The Brands Landing Next
A few openings are worth watching. Six Senses Amaala is expected in 2026, followed by Six Senses AlUla in 2027. Regent Jeddah Corniche also opens in 2027, and it’s a big one, since it’ll be the first Regent hotel in the entire region. Then in 2028, Hotel Indigo arrives in Al Khobar, rounding out the full brand lineup.
Kimpton already made its Middle East debut this year with the opening of Kimpton KAFD Riyadh, so that box is ticked.
Haitham Mattar, who runs IHG’s Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia operations, put it simply: guests now want distinctive luxury experiences with authentic local character. Generic luxury doesn’t cut it anymore. Travelers want hotels that feel like they belong to the place they’re in, not just another lobby that looks the same in every city.
IHG also opened a dedicated Riyadh office back in 2023, which suggests this isn’t a fly-in, fly-out strategy. They’re building local relationships and not just signing deals from a distance. Whether Saudi Arabia hits that 150-million-visitor goal remains to be seen. But IHG clearly isn’t waiting around to find out.
