Salem Al Shahrani

Chief of Staff

Salem Al Shahrani is a Saudi hospitality executive with close to three decades of experience across luxury hotels, royal hospitality and large-scale hotel operations. He holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from King Abdulaziz University (1999), an Executive MBA from the same university (2014) and a master's in international hospitality management from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland (2023), where his dissertation won the university's best research award; he also holds diplomas in rooms division management and accounting management from the American Hotel & Motel Association. He spent close to two decades with the InterContinental hotels group in Jeddah, rising through several roles between 1997 and 2015, then worked as a visiting lecturer and chief executive of Bait for Tourism Consulting and Training at the College of Tourism, King Abdulaziz University, and as an adviser to the head of the Private Affairs of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Between 2019 and 2021 he was General Manager of the Royal Palaces within that office, and from 2021 to 2024 he served as Executive Director of Accor's Makkah complex — Fairmont Makkah Clock Royal Tower, Raffles Makkah Palace, Swissôtel Makkah and Swissôtel Al Maqam — some 5,000 rooms in total. He currently serves as Chief of Staff at RUA AlHaram AlMakki Company, the PIF-owned master developer behind King Salman Gate, the mixed-use destination of up to 12 million square metres of gross floor area adjacent to Al-Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah. He is a member of the Shura Council in its ninth term and sits on its Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, and holds board seats at Asir Tourism Investment Company, Abdulmohsen Al Hokair Group, Rua Al Madinah Holding and Saudi Hospitality Company. He was awarded the King Abdulaziz Medal, Second Class, and was named Best General Manager in the luxury hotels category at the 2023 Hotelier Awards Saudi Arabia.