You cannot answer that from the published distances, and the reason is more interesting than the ranking.
The problem with comparing them
Look up any of these three and you will find distances to the Haram ranging from around fifty metres to around five hundred, for the same building.
None of those numbers is a lie. They are measuring different things. Some measure to the Kaaba itself. Some to the nearest point of the mosque. Some to a specific named gate. Some are straight lines and some are walking routes.
The example that proves it
One of these hotels publishes three distances on its own official page. The Kaaba at 390 metres. The Great Mosque at 170 metres. King Fahad Gate at 320 metres.
Three figures. One hotel. All correct.
Which is why every quote we send states the nearest gate alongside the distance, and why a page that ranks hotels by metres is telling you almost nothing.
The short version
Swissotel Makkah and Swissotel Al Maqam are two different hotels. Both in the Abraj Al Bait complex, and people confuse them constantly.
Pullman ZamZam is also Abraj Al Bait. So two of the three names are the same complex.
Anjum is in Abraj Al Safwah, a different complex, at a different price point. So this is not a three-way comparison. It is a complex question first.
What actually separates them at this level is entrances and lifts, not metres.
Published distances for the same property vary by a factor of ten depending on who measured and to what. |
Ask which of these we can actually book for your dates
First, the two Swissotels
Worth clearing up immediately because it causes real confusion.
There are two, and they are different hotels
Swissotel Makkah and Swissotel Al Maqam Makkah. Both sit within the Abraj Al Bait complex. They are separate properties with separate room inventories and separate entrances.
Swissotel Makkah
Around 1,487 rooms and suites. Its own published distinguishing feature is the entrances: it is described by the brand as the only property in the Abraj Al Bait endowment with a direct entrance through Ajyad Street.
That matters more than it sounds, and there is a section on entrances below.
Swissotel Al Maqam
Larger, at around 1,624 rooms across roughly 47 storeys. Its published access routes include private entrances from the Um Al Qura tunnel and Ibrahim Al Khaleel Street.
The larger room inventory means broader availability, which is genuinely useful when you are booking late or in a peak window. It also means more people using the same lifts, which is covered below.
Which one do people mean?
Usually whichever their agency has allocation in. If somebody quotes you Swissotel, ask which one, because they are not interchangeable and the entrances differ.
The complex question, which comes before the hotel question
Two of the three are the same complex
Swissotel, in both its forms, and Pullman ZamZam all sit within Abraj Al Bait, the Clock Tower complex facing the Haram on the southern side.
Anjum is somewhere else
Anjum Hotel Makkah sits in the Abraj Al Safwah towers, a different development, at a different price point, with reported positioning around King Abdullah and King Fahd gates.
Why that reframes the whole question
This is not really a three-way choice. It is two questions in sequence.
First: do you want to be inside the Abraj Al Bait complex, at Clock Tower pricing, or not?
Second, and only if the answer is yes: which of the properties inside it, which is a much finer-grained decision about entrances, room size and lift load.
What being inside the complex buys
Direct and often covered access to the mosque, the mall on site, and the shortest possible walk in the city. On a five to seven night trip where you intend to walk to every congregational prayer, that is a meaningful thing to buy.
What it costs
Considerably more than comparable rooms a few hundred metres out. On a longer stay, that premium gets harder to justify, and our luxury page sets out the proximity bands and what each one costs.
Why the published distances disagree
The most useful section on this page, because it changes how you read every hotel listing you see afterwards.
The four different things people measure
Measured to | What you get | Why it differs |
|---|
The Kaaba itself | The largest figure | You walk into the mosque then across it |
The nearest point of the mosque | A much smaller figure | The building perimeter is enormous |
A specific named gate | Somewhere in between | Depends entirely which gate |
Walking route rather than straight line | Larger than the straight line | Roads, tunnels and crossings |
The worked example
One of these hotels publishes, on its own official page, the Kaaba at 390 metres, the Great Mosque of Makkah at 170 metres and King Fahad Gate at 320 metres.
A listing site could take any of those three and describe the hotel as 170 metres, 320 metres or 390 metres from the Haram, and none of them would be inaccurate.
What that means when you compare quotes
Two agencies quoting two hotels at 200 metres and 400 metres may be quoting the same walk, measured differently. Or they may be quoting genuinely different walks. From the numbers alone you cannot tell.
The question that resolves it
Which gate, by name, and how far to that gate? Once both quotes are measured to a named gate, they become comparable. Until then they are not.
We put the gate in every quote for exactly this reason, and it is the single question we would ask of any competing quote.
And one more variable nobody counts
The walk inside the mosque. Reaching the building is not reaching the Mataf. Some gates put you close to it and others put you on an upper level several minutes away.
What actually separates them: the entrances
At this level, where every option is a few minutes from the mosque, the entrance matters more than the metres.
Why
Because the complex is large, it sits on a busy road system, and how you get from your lift to the mosque depends entirely on which route your hotel gives you.
Swissotel Makkah
Its published distinguishing feature is a direct entrance through Ajyad Street, described by the brand as unique within the Abraj Al Bait endowment.
Swissotel Al Maqam
Published access includes private entrances from the Um Al Qura tunnel and Ibrahim Al Khaleel Street, plus routes through the complex itself. Accor also lists dedicated lifts for Haram access.
Pullman ZamZam
Also within the complex, with the same broad advantage of internal routes rather than street-level walking. Guest accounts describe separate lift banks, one set for rooms and another for reaching the Haram.
Anjum
A street-level walk rather than a complex-internal one, at a reported five minutes or so to the nearest gate. That is a genuinely short walk and it is a different kind of journey to an internal route.
What to ask
Which entrance you would actually use, and whether the route is covered. On a wet day, in August heat, or during the crowd management that operates in Ramadan, that single answer matters more than fifty metres either way.
The lift problem, which is the real differentiator
The thing nobody puts in a comparison and the thing guests actually complain about.
The arithmetic
One of these hotels has around 1,624 rooms across roughly 47 storeys. At four people per room that is potentially several thousand guests, all of whom want to move at the same five moments each day.
What guests report
Long waits. One guest account of a stay at a property of that size describes it as very busy and full, with the result being long waits at the lifts.
Another, at a different property in the same complex, notes multiple lift banks, one set to reach the rooms and another to reach the Haram, which is the design response to exactly this problem.
Why it undoes the distance advantage
A hotel at 170 metres with a ten minute lift wait is functionally further away than a hotel at 400 metres on a low floor. And in Ramadan, when everybody in the building moves simultaneously, the gap widens.
What to ask
- How many rooms and how many floors?
- How many lifts, and are there separate banks for the rooms and for the Haram access?
- Which floor am I likely to be placed on?
Our advice at this tier
Ask for a low floor unless the view is your specific reason for booking. On a short trip the view is worth the wait. On a fortnight, and in Ramadan, it is not.
The fuller version of this argument is in our five star post.
The Kaaba view question
What it actually is
A specific bookable room category, not a general feature of the building. Within any tower, the rooms with a genuine view of the Kaaba are a small subset.
How small
Reported inventory for Kaaba and Haram view rooms is frequently in the region of twenty to thirty rooms in an entire tower. Which is why they are priced the way they are and why availability language appears in so many quotes.
The distinctions to insist on
Term | What it can mean |
|---|
Kaaba view | A direct view of the Kaaba from the room |
Haram view | A view of the mosque, not necessarily the Kaaba |
Partial view | You can see some of it, sometimes at an angle |
Subject to availability | You are not being guaranteed anything |
What to ask
Is the view guaranteed in the room category I am booking, or allocated on arrival? Those are completely different products and only one of them is worth paying for.
And the honest note
A Kaaba view is a genuine thing to want and it is also the only part of this comparison that has nothing to do with the quality of your Umrah. You will spend your waking hours at the mosque rather than looking at it.
Which suits whom
Given all of the above, the honest allocation.
If you are | Lean toward | Why |
|---|
On a five to seven night trip | Abraj Al Bait complex | Every prayer without planning transport |
Staying two weeks or more | Outside the complex | The premium gets harder to justify |
Travelling with elderly parents | Complex, low floor | Internal covered routes, and ask about lifts |
A family wanting space | The larger-room properties | Room configuration varies within the complex |
Booking late or in a peak window | The largest inventory | Broader availability when others are full |
Wanting a Kaaba view | Complex, and confirm the category | It exists nowhere else |
Watching the budget | Abraj Al Safwah or further out | Materially lower at a short walk |
In the last ten nights of Ramadan | Complex, low floor | Access, and the lift problem is at its worst |
The two questions that decide it
How long are you staying, and who is walking? Those two answers settle the complex question, and everything after it is fine-tuning.
What we would say to most people
If you are going for a week and the budget reaches, the complex is worth it. If you are going for a fortnight, the same money spent on a property a short walk away plus a longer stay is usually the better trip.
What we will not tell you
A short section, because a comparison page that pretends to more certainty than it has is worse than no comparison page.
We will not publish room rates for these properties
We cannot verify them, they move constantly, and a figure that is wrong by the time you read it is worse than no figure.
We will not rank them one to three
Because the ranking depends entirely on your trip length, your party and your month, and any list that ignores those is a marketing device.
We will not claim distances we have not measured to a named gate
Which is the whole argument of this page. The figures published elsewhere are measured to different things and we are not going to add another set to the pile.
What we will do
Tell you which of these we can actually place you in on your dates, name the property, give you the distance measured to a named gate, and tell you what floor band to expect.
And if we cannot get you into the one you asked about, we will say so rather than substituting quietly.
How to compare any two Makkah hotels
The transferable method, which works on these three and on anything else you are offered.
- Which complex or district is it in? This decides the price bracket before anything else.
- How many metres, measured to which named gate? Both halves. A number without a gate is not comparable.
- Is the route internal and covered, or street level? Different journeys in rain, heat and crowd control.
- How many rooms, how many floors, how many lifts? The differentiator nobody asks about.
- Which floor band will I be in? Low for a long stay, high only if the view is the point.
- Is any view guaranteed in the category, or allocated on arrival?
- Is breakfast included at this specific property? Varies more than the tier suggests.
- What is the room configuration and can it take my party? Quad, twin, connecting.
The two that do the most work
Numbers two and four. Metres to a named gate, and lift load. Between them they explain almost every difference between two properties that look identical on paper.
What we put in every quote
The property name, the distance in metres and the nearest gate. If allocation is unconfirmed you get a shortlist and a guaranteed maximum distance rather than a phrase.
The full eight-item package checklist is on the flights and hotel page.
What our packages cost
Our own prices, which we can stand behind, rather than rates for individual properties that we cannot.
Tier | 7 nights | 10 nights | 12 nights | 14 nights |
|---|
3 Star | From £499 | From £545 | From £579 | From £625 |
4 Star | From £629 | From £679 | From £715 | From £769 |
5 Star | From £690 | From £745 | From £790 | From £825 |
Haram facing, under 200 m | From £879 | From £975 | On request | From £1,129 |
Kaaba view | From £1,149 | From £1,285 | From £1,375 | From £1,489 |
Per person, quad sharing, off-peak departures, covering both cities. Includes return flights, both hotels named in writing with the distance in metres and the nearest gate, the Saudi Umrah visa, all three transfers and guided Ziyarat. Held with a £99 deposit.
Where these three sit
Complex properties fall in our Haram facing and Kaaba view brackets. Properties a short walk out, in the Safwah direction and along Ibrahim Al Khalil, fall in our four and five star brackets.
The step that matters
Five star to Haram facing at £189 for seven nights. That is the move from a few hundred metres out to inside the ring, and it is the largest single step in our range.
And in peak windows
Everything widens. Five star in the last ten nights of Ramadan starts at £1,749, and complex properties in that window are the hardest thing in Umrah travel to secure. Detail on the Ramadan page.
The summary
It is not a three-way comparison
Two of the three names are the same complex. Anjum is a different development at a different price point. Answer the complex question first and the rest becomes fine-tuning.
There are two Swissotels
Swissotel Makkah and Swissotel Al Maqam. Different properties, different entrances, different room counts. If somebody quotes you Swissotel, ask which.
Distance figures are not comparable as published
The same hotel is described anywhere from fifty to five hundred metres depending on what was measured. Only a distance to a named gate means anything.
Lifts matter more than metres at this level
A hotel at 170 metres with a ten minute lift wait is functionally further than one at 400 metres on a low floor.
And the question to actually ask
How long are you staying and who is walking. Everything else follows from those two answers.
Ask which of these we can book for your dates
Comparing Makkah hotels: 60 questions answered
Grouped by topic. Direct answer first. Property details are drawn from hotel-published and operator sources and change over time, so confirm anything critical at booking.
The headline question
Which of these three is best?
It depends on how long you are staying and who is walking. It is also not really a three-way question, because two of the three are the same complex.
Why can I not compare them on distance?
Because published figures for the same hotel range from around fifty metres to around five hundred, depending on what was measured.
What gets measured differently?
The Kaaba itself, the nearest point of the mosque, a specific named gate, and straight line versus walking route.
Can you give an example?
One of these hotels publishes on its own page the Kaaba at 390 metres, the Great Mosque at 170 and King Fahad Gate at 320. Three figures, one hotel, all correct.
So what should I ask?
How many metres, measured to which named gate. Both halves, or the number means nothing.
Do you publish distances?
Always to a named gate. We are not adding another unanchored figure to the pile.
The two Swissotels
Is there more than one Swissotel in Makkah?
Yes. Swissotel Makkah and Swissotel Al Maqam Makkah are separate properties, both in the Abraj Al Bait complex.
How big is Swissotel Makkah?
Around 1,487 rooms and suites.
What distinguishes it?
Its entrances. The brand describes it as the only property in the Abraj Al Bait endowment with a direct entrance through Ajyad Street.
How big is Swissotel Al Maqam?
Larger, at around 1,624 rooms across roughly 47 storeys.
What are its access routes?
Published entrances include the Um Al Qura tunnel and Ibrahim Al Khaleel Street, plus routes through the complex, and Accor lists dedicated lifts for Haram access.
Does the larger inventory help?
For availability, yes, particularly booking late or in a peak window. It also means more people using the same lifts.
Which one do agencies mean when they say Swissotel?
Usually whichever they hold allocation in. Ask which, because they are not interchangeable.
The complexes
Which hotels are in Abraj Al Bait?
Both Swissotels and Pullman ZamZam, among others. It is the Clock Tower complex facing the Haram on the southern side.
Where is Anjum?
In the Abraj Al Safwah towers, a different development, at a different price point.
So this is not a three-way comparison?
No. It is two questions. Do you want the Abraj Al Bait complex, and if so, which property inside it.
What does being in the complex buy?
Direct and often covered access, the mall on site, and the shortest walk in the city.
What does it cost?
Considerably more than comparable rooms a few hundred metres out.
When is that premium worth it?
On a five to seven night trip where you intend to walk to every congregational prayer.
When is it not?
On a fortnight or longer, where the same money on a property a short walk away plus more nights is usually the better trip.
Entrances
Why do entrances matter more than metres here?
Because everything at this level is a few minutes away, and how you get from your lift to the mosque depends on which route your hotel gives you.
What is an internal route?
A path through the complex rather than along a street, usually covered, which matters in rain, heat and crowd control.
Does Anjum have that?
It is a street-level walk of a reported five minutes or so rather than a complex-internal route. A short walk, but a different kind of journey.
What should I ask?
Which entrance would I actually use, and is the route covered.
When does it matter most?
August heat, wet days, and the crowd management that operates in Ramadan.
Lifts
Why are lifts a factor at all?
Because a property with 1,624 rooms across 47 storeys has potentially several thousand guests wanting to move at the same five moments each day.
How long are the waits?
Guest accounts of properties at that scale describe long waits when the hotel is full. One describes a stay as very busy and full, with long waits at the lifts as the result.
Do hotels design around it?
Some do. Guest accounts of one complex property describe separate lift banks, one for rooms and another for reaching the Haram.
Does it cancel out the distance advantage?
It can. A hotel at 170 metres with a ten minute lift wait is functionally further than one at 400 metres on a low floor.
When is it worst?
Ramadan, when everybody in the building moves simultaneously.
What should I ask?
How many rooms, how many floors, how many lifts, whether there are separate banks, and which floor I will be on.
High floor or low floor?
Low, unless the view is your specific reason for booking. On a short trip the view is worth the wait. On a fortnight it is not.
Kaaba view
What is a Kaaba view room?
A specific bookable category, not a general feature of the building.
How many are there?
Reported inventory is frequently around twenty to thirty rooms in an entire tower.
Why does that matter?
It explains the price and why availability language appears in so many quotes.
What is the difference between Kaaba view and Haram view?
Kaaba view means a direct view of the Kaaba. Haram view means a view of the mosque, not necessarily the Kaaba itself.
What does partial view mean?
You can see some of it, sometimes at an angle.
What is the question to ask?
Is the view guaranteed in the category I am booking, or allocated on arrival. Those are different products.
Is it worth paying for?
It is a genuine thing to want, and it is the only part of this comparison that has nothing to do with the quality of your Umrah.
Which suits whom
Which suits a short trip?
The complex, if the budget reaches. Every prayer without planning transport.
Which suits a fortnight?
Something outside the complex, plus more nights for the same money.
Which suits elderly parents?
The complex, on a low floor, with the internal covered routes. And ask about lifts specifically.
Which suits a family?
The properties with larger room configurations, which vary within the complex. Ask about the actual room rather than the tier.
Which suits a late booking?
The largest inventory, because availability is broader when others are full.
Which suits a tight budget?
Abraj Al Safwah or further out, which is materially lower at a short walk.
Which suits the last ten nights of Ramadan?
The complex, on a low floor. Access matters most and the lift problem is at its worst.
What are the two questions that decide it?
How long you are staying, and who is walking.
What we will and will not say
Will you publish room rates for these hotels?
No. We cannot verify them, they move constantly, and a stale figure is worse than none.
Will you rank them one to three?
No, because the ranking depends on your trip length, party and month.
Will you tell me if you cannot book one?
Yes, rather than substituting quietly.
What will you tell me?
Which of these we can place you in on your dates, the property name, the distance measured to a named gate, and what floor band to expect.
Why so cautious about distances?
Because the figures published elsewhere measure different things, and adding another unanchored number helps nobody.
Comparing any two hotels
What is the method?
Complex or district first, then metres to a named gate, then the route, then the lift load, then the floor band, then the view guarantee.
Which two questions do the most work?
Metres to a named gate, and lift load. Between them they explain almost every difference between two properties that look identical on paper.
Does the walk inside count?
Yes, and nobody counts it. Reaching the building is not reaching the Mataf, and some gates put you on an upper level several minutes away.
Is breakfast standardised?
No, it varies more than the tier suggests. Ask about the specific property.
What is your deposit?
£99 per person, and it fixes your price in writing.
Where do these properties sit in your pricing?
Complex properties fall in our Haram facing and Kaaba view brackets. Properties a short walk out fall in our four and five star brackets.
What is the biggest step in your range?
Five star to Haram facing at £189 for seven nights, which is the move from a few hundred metres out to inside the ring.
Where can I read about the districts?
Our Makkah areas guide covers all six districts and what each walk is actually like.
Related reading
Ask what we can actually book
If one of these three is on your list, tell us your dates and we will say plainly whether we can place you there, what the distance is measured to a named gate, and what floor band to expect.
If we cannot get you into it, we will say so and show you the nearest equivalent rather than substituting quietly and letting you find out at check-in.
Packages Umrah
WhatsApp or call: +44 7737 144 335
Office: 7 Huxley Avenue, Manchester, M8 0SJ
English and Urdu. Same-day quotes.
Packages from £499pp, Haram facing from £879pp, held with a £99 deposit. |
Ask which of these we can book
