What is the best car hire agency in Saudi Arabia?
Based on real customer ratings over the last 6 months, the best car hire companies in Saudi Arabia are;
- Budget (6.4/10 – 100+ reviews)
- Avis (6.1/10 – 100+ reviews)
- Enterprise (6.1/10 – 100+ reviews)
Most popular car hire locations in Saudi Arabia:
The most popular car rental agents in Saudi Arabia:
- Budget (Tel: +966 92000 4124)
- Europcar (Tel: +966 92000 3245)
- Hertz (Tel: +966 92000 5561)
- Sixt (Tel: +966 92000 0991)
Saudi Arabia Mini Guide
The largest Arab country in area and the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and of the Islamic faith, the huge, sandy waste of Saudi Arabia contains more oil than any other nation on earth. Its reserves are estimated at some 165,000 million barrels which is a quarter of the world’s supply.
Using all its revenues, Saudi Arabia launched a massive development programme, so that suddenly its towns were bustling with foreigners: contractors, immigrant workers and business representatives from all over the world. Towns and ports were transformed into major commercial centres with modern office blocks, factories and housing estates.
The land and people
Saudi Arabia is thinly populated, with an estimated 11.5 million people and it contains some of the hottest, bleakest desert in the world: temperatures often rise to 45 degrees Celsius. Beyond the mountains, the land slopes gradually down to the Ad Dahna plain, bordering the Gulf.
Fierce winds and sandstorms sweep the deserts and rocky regions in the centre of the country. In the south east is the forbidding desert of the Rub Al Khali (“Empty Quarter”) – it is waterless, uninhabited and almost featureless. Large areas of the interior are still unexplored and the southern boundaries with Yemen, South Yemen and Oman remain vague.
The people of the peninsula are the descendants of the original Arabs who swept out of Arabia across the Middle East and North Africa in two centuries of conquest after Muhammad proclaimed the new faith of Islam in the 7th century. On the Red Sea coast, the descendants of African slaves have intermingled with the Arabs.
But today, because of rapid industrialisation, there are 1.5 million immigrants in addition to 10 million Saudis. Yemenis doing mainly unskilled work number about a million, and other workers include Palestinians, Jordanians, Sudanese, Indians, Syrians and Egyptians. At the managerial and technical levels, Americans, Britons and other Europeans do tours of duty.
Saudi Arabia Factfile:
- Saudi Arabia which is officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the third largest country in the Middle East
- It is sometimes referred to as 'The Land of the Two Holy Mosques' in reference to Mecca and Medina which are the two holiest places in Islam
- The King of Saudi Arabia is Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz
- The traditional headdress often worn by men in the country is called a Ghutrah and is a square of cloth and helps provide protection from the sun
- The currency in Saudi Arabia is the Saudi riyal (SAR)