Will be headed to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in August for work. What should I expect? Will be there 3 weeks on/2 weeks off.
What should you expect?....It's HOT. Not much more than that, every store in the malls say SALE 50% off...Close Out.... Perhaps a little culture shock if you've never been....but other than that....
I'll be consulting for a bank. Don't have a whole lot of details yet. Still not sure if we'll be staying at a hotel or at an apartment on a compound. What is Jeddah like? Good food?
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Jeddah is real nice. Amazing food and tons of flights in and out of the city (to Dubai, Bahrain, Doha, etc)
See if you can foil their plan to end the Houston oil boom. You'll be a national hero and local legend.
I was just there for work last month. Really cool place. There is not much different than any other place in the middle east. It's not as restrictive as Riyadh. You can wear shorts. Women have jobs. You can negotiate with cabbies. But Uber and Lyft work there too and it's easier to get around that way. The food is pretty bad, at least to me... I don't care for the food. Fresh squeezed juice was interesting to me... cus everything was made fresh and it was so cheap. I was there to consult for a company too. And, business there is dying.. even though there is a huge amount of development, no one knows who is going to use it.
Some pretty good dive/snorkeling spots in the Red Sea very close to Jeddah. Lots of cool fish there unique to the Red Sea. Highly recommend. If you're there awhile get a pier rod and you can do some solid fishing there too. Weekend trip to Abha is worth it if you want to get away from the heat - cooler town in the mountains. Good hikes and they have native monkeys.
How long were you there? And where did you stay? Looks like I'll be there off and on for the next year.
What does this mean? Are they building ghost towns like in China to show real estate development but really it's just to inflate GDP by investment or construction that no one needs? I heard Dubai had a real estate boom and crash because they overbuilt in 2008, but it seems in 2015 things are okay. So who's right?
I was there for 10 days. Meeting with the client for 4 out of the 10 days. I stayed at the Rosewood Jeddah in an area called Corniche. Hotel is awesome.. highly recommended http://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/jeddah I am sure your travel and accommodation, like mine, is billed to the client. So, I would not accept staying at an expat compound if I were you. I've seen some and they are nice, but I would never allow that when travelling for a client. I'll be going back to Saudi also later on this year. Not sure when yet though.
The city of Jeddah had a really good economic year in 2014. Companies came in to develop based on the good 2014 expecting it to continue on. So now there are tons of companies in the city developing and competing for a slice of the pie. There's too many people there now and not enough business to go around. Economic projections are down for 2016. A lot of the business is based on what the royals do but the royals apparently are fickle and hard to predict what they will do.
