Projects currently under construction are at 357 projects/114,817 rooms. Projects scheduled to start construction in the next 12 months stand at 113 projects/27,872 rooms, and projects in the early planning stage are at 137 projects/29,493 rooms. The Middle East had 15 new hotels/6,527 rooms open in the first quarter of this year.

Countries with the greatest number of projects in the construction pipeline are Saudi Arabia with 213 projects/69,038 rooms and the UAE with 186 projects/56,188 rooms.  Following distantly is Egypt with a record 65 projects/16,133 rooms, then Qatar with 56 projects/13,965 rooms, and Oman with 39 projects/7,545 rooms. Dubai continues to lead the construction pipeline in the UAE with 147 projects/45,647 rooms.

Cities with the largest hotel construction pipelines are the provincial region with 70 projects/14,425 rooms; Riyadh with 61 projects/11,892 rooms; Jeddah with 52 projects/11,099 rooms; Doha, Qatar with 49 projects/11,660 rooms and Makkah with 30 projects/31,622 rooms. In the Middle East, 47 percent of the rooms in the construction pipeline are found within these five cities.