It was a vacation fit for a Saudi king.
The annual summer jaunt of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to Morocco reportedly cost $100 million, the most expensive “all-inclusive package” ever, Haaretz reports.
The Saudi monarch was greeted by Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine Othmani at an airport in Tangier last month before settling into a 74-acre estate and checking his massive entourage into some of the city’s swankiest hotels. More than 1,000 guests, including relatives, ministers and security staffers, arrived with Salman, who reserved about 800 hotel rooms for the trip, along with 200 cars that were leased for the group.
The cost of the month-long holiday is expected to top $100 million, good enough for the priciest all-inclusive getaway ever and will account for 1.5 percent of the country’s revenue from foreign tourism this year, Haaretz reports.
While he owns properties around the world, King Salman’s Tangiers compound is apparently his preferred destination. Roughly 100 black Mercedes sedans and Range Rovers were spotted during his trip last year, ready to whisk the royal party to locations along the country’s Atlantic coast. The king’s palace complex is outfitted with its own medical facilities and kitchens prepped to pump out dishes featuring lobster, caviar and truffles from France, the New York Times reports.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Culture and Information told the Times last year in a written statement that the costs were covered by the king’s fortune rather than the government.
And the wealth apparently rolled downhill, as household staffers who asked not to be identified told the Times that they received a free trip for a pilgrimage to Mecca upon returning their ID badges after last year’s trip.