Visa Or Airport Hotel, Saudi Arabia?

[sandwichmaker]

This is a pain.

 

I want to book a ticket with a 16 hour stop in RUH. Saudi. Anyone transit there before? I want to leave the airport, because I hear it's a crap airport, and also because I want to get a good sleep in a hotel. 

 

Anyone know about getting out of the airport? Seems to be a lot of conflicting info everywhere. I just want to sleep for feck sake, while happily paying over-the odds to be near the airport. (Unless there is a hotel in the airport?)

[crad]

I would imagine there will be airside accommodation as obviously you will not be the first one to be in this situation. Especially as Saudi can these days be quite cheap to fly and that will suck in a lot of people. Infidels like you cannot normally leave the airport in Saudi, so I imagine they will have a Hotel Infidel airside. But it will i would imagine cost.

[Old55]

I did a quick google and found that Makarim Riyada Hotel is located inside the airport. Perhaps you could email or call them?

[sandwichmaker]

I sent them an email. Its not clear from online reviews if the hotel is inside or just near the airport.

[crad]

I don't understand why you didn't just pay a bit more for a flight with better stopovers like at Dubai or Abu Dhabi or Doha, which are not usually expensive and where the airports are decent. If you are ready to pay quite a bit on top of the airfare for a hotel, why were you not prepared to pay more for a better flight in the first place. And what's all this with the additional stopover in Belgrade as well. You are headed to London, the most significant city in Europe and to where there is probably more flights from the Middle East than any other place. Why didn't you get one of the numerous direct flights. Although Belgrade will be marginally less of a nightmare than Riyadh will.

 

you also did not necessarily have to fly to London. London is not the only city in the British isles with an airport. Although flights to Heathrow are usually cheapest, there might have been a better flight to Manchester or Birmingham and also other British cities. Once I walked into this travel agent's shop in Tenerife and asked them if they had a flight in a couple of days to the UK (the flights cost next to nothing, from Tenerife). They asked where in the UK and I said anywhere. It doesn't matter. The main British island might be larger than the one we are on now, Tenerife is, but it is still not all that big. Which they thought was totally hilarious.

 

you are entitled to a meal voucher when your stopover is over 4 hours and good airlines like Emirates will actually tell you this. However I doubt Saudi will. I got a meal voucher in Abu Dhabi last time that was worth $20. You need to go the Saudi airlines desk with your boarding pass from Manila to get it.

[sandwichmaker]

I went with gulf air and 17 hours in bahrain. It has the highly rated movenpick hotel for £100. I can get a transit visa in advance from the bahrain website.

[crad]

I'm somewhat surprised you could not find a better stopover than that even at quite a low one-way price only one month in advance from Manila of only around £400, or so you said which I would say is not too bad. So the night in the Movenpick basically puts 25% on the price of the flight. Two 8 hour flights with a 4 hour stopover in between them is not any kind of ordeal for me at all. I would not get a flight if I could possibly help it with a stopover like 17 hours, unless it was a city I actually wanted to visit. Doha is probably not absolutely, totally without interest but I would not class it as likely to be all that interesting.

I was considering getting a Turkish Air flight via Istanbul to Kuala Lumpur and then to Cebu from there, because Istanbul is somewhere I would like to visit but have never quite got round to it even though I have had plenty of chances. And the Turkish Air prices were not looking too bad either. I would have given Istanbul days though, not hours. Three/four nights in Istanbul at least because there is such a large amount of museums and history and sights there to look at and absorb.

My next flight, via Abu Dhabi has a 2 hr 30m stopover out and a 3 hr 55m one back in, When 4 hr 5m would have been better because you get the meal voucher then. Also when I have flown with Emirates, the stopovers were never that bad. I just wouldn't buy a flight with a really long stopover. Sometimes in lounges I talk to people halfway through like 13 or 18 hour stopovers and I always felt sorry for them. Obviously they weren't staying in any Movenpick hotel. Even the two stopovers I have had that were like 8 or 9 hours, were far too long.

[sandwichmaker]

Weird. A long stop over gives me the chance to sleep, and that's worth more than gold to me. I have no intention to view the city. I'll go to sleep. A good 12 hour sleep possibly. Certainly not less than 9 knowing me. After check in and travel, perhaps I'll have 3.5 hours to see something in Bahrain. Maybe I'm rare that I prefer a long stop over.

[crad]

just so long as you don't tell Leah, you will be fine.