The city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, plans to build the largest hotel in the world by 2017. The Abraj Qudai hotel will be built in the Manafiya district, south of the world’s largest mosque — Mosque al-Haram.
Some fear the huge new hotel is a step towards transforming «holy places» into a city like Las Vegas. The huge 10,000-room hotel will include 70 restaurants, food courts, a bus station, a shopping mall, a conference center and five floors dedicated to the royal family of Saudi Arabia. This is a city within a city.
Meanwhile, in the Al-Haram Mosque, prayer halls are being expanded to accommodate pilgrims, of whom, according to experts, there will be about 7 million by 2040. Some of them check in at the Royal Clock Tower in the Abraj al-Beit complex, which is still considered the largest building in the world (not the tallest).
