think business
InterContinental Riyadh

Let’s face it, most foreigners travel to the Kingdom for business, not leisure. In Riyadh, the gold souks next to the Musmak fort are definitely worth a visit, as is the old city of Dir’iyah. But beyond night entertainment at the Faisaliah Tower, your schedule in Riyadh is likely to be marked by a company boardroom. That is where the InterContinental comes in: your office away from home.

Located less than 25 minutes from Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, the six-floor Intercontinental is a choice for pragmatists. The 275 guest rooms and 61 suites are as lavish as you are likely to encounter in Saudi Arabia. But the competitive edge is not only in the hotel’s location—or even in its nine-hole golf course—but in the conference spaces. There are six meeting rooms of different sizes. The Main Ball Room, lit by rows of chandeliers, has capacity for up to 1,400 guests. Smaller boardroom-style conference halls come equipped with slide projectors, DVDs, lecterns, microphones and high-speed Internet. In total, the InterContinental boasts more than 20,000 square feet of corporate space.

“Our last renovation of the Club InterContinental wing was designed in a manner that reflected local tastes, as well as the three decades of our chain’s hospitality tradition in Riyadh,” says Nassir Al Dossari, the general manager. The hotel industry here has been experiencing high demand since oil prices took off in 2002. The average occupancy rate at five-star hotels in the city reached 70 per cent in 2006.

Besides the convenience of meeting inside the hotel, the InterContinental has three specialty restaurants. Although it is only five minutes away from the bustling downtown, the level of security is very high. And security is highly maintained perhaps due to the proximity of the Saudi Ministry of the Interior. For those less inclined to part from this world of self-contained convenience, there is always the golf course, the swimming pools (both indoor and outdoor), floodlit tennis courts, squash courts and a 12-lane bowling alley.