Hilton Hotels has five properties in Saudi Arabia - the 357-room Madinah Hilton Hotel, Makkah Hilton and Towers Hotel (1400 rooms combined), the 288-room Jeddah Hilton and the 38-room Qasr Al Sharq - with the Makkah properties "strongly aimed at the religious market for Haj", while Jeddah is a business and convention hotel and Qasr Al Sharq caters to royal families.
"We are missing Riyadh and would like to expand along the East Coast and we have various discussions ongoing that I hope will get us there eventually," says Herzog.
And the occupancy levels in all the hotels suggest that the market is booming in Saudi Arabia, with Herzog revealing that the Makkah and Medinah properties are in the high 70s, Qasr Al Sharq the mid 50s and Jeddah the high 70s to low 80s.
Riyadh: a newcomer's perspective
Four Seasons Riyadh opened just five years ago in 2003 and general manager Rami Sayees explains that it wasn't easy getting a foothold in the market as a new property, especially one that was part of a hotel group that had only recently entered the Middle East and had just a handful of properties.
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"Certainly we faced difficulties when the hotel first opened as we were bringing a new name to the market and it was only the second or third Four Seasons to open in the region," he says.
"But in 2005 things started picking up, 2007 was the best year and the first quarter of 2008 we saw amazing results. For the first quarter of 2008 occupancy is 84%."
Riyadh is traditionally a business destination, but Sayees says that things are starting to change.
"The country is starting to open up slowly, and recently there was a decree by the King allowing female travellers to check into hotels without their partners - something not allowed before - so all of a sudden you have an influx of ladies coming on the weekend, whether to visit friends or just to shop," he says.
"This has boosted our weekend business and we've had to come up with weekend packages - something that we didn't do before - and it's proving very successful."
The majority of this leisure business is coming from Saudi Arabia and the GCC region, but some international leisure business is beginning to come in according to Sayees.
"The Saudi tourism commission was created in the second half of last year and its objective is to start putting Riyadh or Saudi Arabia in general, on the tourism map and opening up, telling people what we have to offer in terms of sights and museums. And there are now 18 official tour operators who are allowed to obtain group visas," he says.
"We are going to work with them and try and target European destinations, especially where we have Four Seasons properties and there is that brand awareness. If every hotel does the same - and that's what hoteliers in Riyadh are now doing - then we can start trying to expand that international market."
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