Middle East Hotel Amenity Trends: What the Gulf's Record Pipeline Means for Suppliers

No hospitality market is adding rooms faster than the Middle East, and no market is adding luxury rooms at anything like its rate. For amenity buyers at hotel groups, and for the distributors who supply them, that changes the brief in four ways: the volume of product needed, the certifications guests and owners expect, the packaging rules now in force, and the fragrance direction. This post sets out the numbers, all from published industry sources, and what they mean for an amenity program.

The pipeline, in numbers

Lodging Econometrics' fourth-quarter 2025 report puts the Middle East hotel construction pipeline at a record 710 projects and 176,402 rooms, up 13% in rooms year on year. Of those, 332 projects and 84,172 rooms are already under construction, with 93 hotels due to open in 2026 and 94 in 2027.

The country split matters for anyone planning supply:

• Saudi Arabia: 394 projects and 106,521 rooms, the largest pipeline in the region by a wide margin.
• Egypt: 140 projects and 31,104 rooms.
• UAE: 104 projects and 25,459 rooms.
• Oman: 28 projects and 4,789 rooms.
• Qatar: 11 projects and 2,170 rooms.

Knight Frank's Saudi Report for 2026 adds the picture behind the pipeline: quality hotel stock of 171,650 rooms, around 94,500 more rooms under construction or in advanced planning, and a forecast that luxury, upper upscale, and upscale rooms will make up 76% of the country's total by 2030, from about 60% today. The holy cities dominate the mega-projects, with Makkah alone holding 40,200 rooms, and Red Sea Global is planned to reach around 8,000 hotel rooms by 2030.

In the UAE, Knight Frank's autumn 2025 review forecasts 235,674 rooms across 1,184 hotels by 2030, with 43% of upcoming supply in the luxury segment. Dubai's pipeline is 47% luxury and 21% upper upscale. Qatar's 40,787 keys are 68% concentrated in the four- and five-star segments.

The demand side is set by policy. Saudi Arabia hit its original Vision 2030 target of 100 million visits in 2023 and revised it to 150 million annual visits by 2030, with 70 million of those international. 2025 closed at roughly 122 million visitors.

What half a pipeline of luxury rooms does to an amenity brief

Across the region, luxury and upper upscale together account for about half of pipeline rooms. That is the segment where amenity quality is a guest-experience line item rather than a cost line, and where owners expect a branded or custom line rather than a catalogue product.

For suppliers, three consequences follow.

Custom and branded lines become the norm. Luxury openings want a signature scent, custom packaging, and a formula story that fits the property. We describe how groups build such a line in our guide to custom branded hotel amenities and the fragrance side in signature scent strategy.

Volumes arrive in waves. A 500-room opening needs launch stock, then a steady run rate. Manufacturers that can hold a specification stable across repeat batches, with batch-level traceability, matter more than manufacturers that can only do a first run well. Our quality process explains how we manage that.

Multi-property standardisation follows. Once a group has three or four Gulf openings, procurement wants one specification, one supplier, and one set of documents across properties, often across several countries with different import rules.

Halal-ready formulas: a preference that is becoming a baseline

Halal certification of cosmetics in Saudi Arabia is voluntary rather than mandatory, and no major hotel group has published a policy requiring alcohol-free toiletries in Gulf properties. It would be wrong to present Halal amenities as a legal requirement.

It is right to present them as a market expectation that is hardening. The GCC has its own standard for Halal cosmetics and personal care, GSO 2055-4:2021, alongside GSO 2055-2:2021 for certification bodies. The Mastercard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index 2025 recorded 176 million international Muslim arrivals in 2024, up 25% on 2023, and projects 245 million by 2030. And hoteliers speaking at a 2026 CrescentRating event described Halal food and prayer facilities as "the baseline" rather than a differentiator, with some properties replacing alcoholic minibar items with non-alcoholic alternatives for GCC guests.

For amenities, Halal-ready means an ingredient set and a production process certified by a recognised body, not a claim added to a label. Malaysia's JAKIM certification is widely recognised across the GCC, which is one reason Gulf buyers source from Malaysian factories. HE Manufacturing is JAKIM Halal-certified; buyers who need to verify any supplier's claim can use our Halal factory vetting checklist.

Single-use plastic rules now in force

The UAE's federal Ministerial Decision No. 380 of 2022 banned single-use plastic shopping bags from 1 January 2024 and, from 1 January 2026, extends the ban to beverage cups and lids, cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, and polystyrene food containers, plus single-use bags under 50 microns regardless of material. Dubai's Executive Council Resolution No. 124 of 2023 runs a parallel phased ban that reached plates, cups, lids, and cutlery on 1 January 2026.

Neither instrument names hotel bathroom amenities, and we found no Saudi rule targeting hotel amenities at all, so amenity bottles are not banned. The rules matter anyway, for two reasons. Hotel operators are reading them as the direction of travel and moving toward dispensers and refill formats ahead of any mandate, and the dry-amenity side of a program (cups, stirrers, vanity kit components) is directly affected. The cost and sustainability maths of that shift is set out in bulk dispensers vs bottled amenities and refillable vs single-use.

Fragrance: oud, rose, and musk, and a fast-growing market

The regional fragrance signature is well documented. At Beautyworld Middle East 2025, IFF's fragrance president described Middle Eastern houses building on "traditional ingredients like oud, rose and musk", and fragrance-house trend teams pointed to fruity oud and fruit-with-leather profiles as the emerging direction. Messe Frankfurt cites Euromonitor data showing fragrance growing 11% a year in MENA, with the GCC growing faster than the regional average.

For an amenity program, that supports a scent direction with oud, rose, or musk facets for Gulf properties, developed with a fragrance house and tested for stability in each formula. Claims about amber or other specific notes should rest on the property's own guest research rather than regional generalisations.

Where the products come from

Most amenity liquids used in Gulf hotels are imported, and the sourcing question is usually between Europe, China, and Southeast Asia. Malaysia's case for Gulf amenity programs rests on Halal certification recognised in the GCC, English-language technical documentation, GMP and ISO 22716 factories, and direct shipping from Port Klang to Jebel Ali, Dammam, and Jeddah. The trade-offs against China and Thailand are covered honestly in Malaysia vs China and Malaysia vs Vietnam vs Thailand.

A checklist for Gulf amenity briefs

1. Segment and volume: rooms at opening, expected occupancy, and the run rate that implies.
2. Format mix: bottled, dispenser bulk, or both, with refill pouches if the property is moving early on plastics.
3. Certification: Halal (name the certifying body), plus any sustainability certification the owner requires.
4. Fragrance direction, and whether it must match an existing signature scent.
5. Import documentation for the destination country, including GSO and SASO conformity where applicable. Our post on GHS labelling by country covers the Gulf.
6. Multi-property plans, so the specification is written once for several openings.

We manufacture wet amenities and dry amenities for hotel groups and distributors serving the Gulf. To scope a program, contact our team with the six points above.