First Look Inside Riyadh's Very First Sofitel Hotel

There’s a quiet thrill—and justified pride—in being the first. Sofitel Riyadh Hotel is just that: the capital city’s very first Sofitel, rising in the leafy district of Ar Rahmaniyyah, a quieter pocket in the ever-relentless Riyadh.  Inside, 388 rooms and suites stretch across the property, each one designed with an unspoken logic: space, light, and a quiet insistence that the city outside—with all its deadlines and company-wide meetings—can wait. Sun spills through floor-to-ceiling windows, highlighting muted tones that never shout for attention. A desk, a chair, a bed—they feel measured, deliberate, enough to make a short business stopover feel a tiny bit less stressful.  At the heart of the hotel lies the Princess Nouf International Convention Centre. With nearly 8,500 square metres of ballrooms and meeting spaces, it could host a city within itself: conferences, exhibitions, weddings, galas, or a 16-year-old’s dream birthday bash. Walking through it, you feel the scale without being overwhelmed, as if the building itself knows how to hold people, noise, and a seven-tiered cake with equal flair.  Beyond ballrooms and boardrooms, Sofitel Riyadh knows how to feed both appetite and curiosity. A French brasserie transports you to the streets of Strasbourg, Sofitel’s hometown. A Levantine restaurant brings warmth, texture and all the hummus you can eat to the table. And, tucked slightly apart, a cigar lounge offers a corner for after-work reflection, a much-needed drink, or an afternoon spent watching sunlight shift across the lobby without a single client amend in sight.  Wellness here is equally considered rather than conspicuous. Clarins Spa brings spaces designed for true release, not Instagram moments. A fully equipped fitness centre and indoor pool are welcome invitations to move—or to let time slow around you while, for the first time in a long time, you do nothing at all. Walking through Sofitel Riyadh’s public spaces, corridors, and lounges, you can sense the city rushing by, but inside, the hotel asks only that you notice the sweep of light across a marble floor, the architecture of a staircase, the deliberate quiet between all those meetings that could have been a tweet.