It said 59 out of 99 furnished apartments checked in the city violated various rules and regulations last month.

Field teams from the municipality make regular inspections of the hotels and furnished apartments to make sure that they are abiding by the rules and applying strict safety measures. The municipality said teams usually inspect electricity connections, security measures, early-warning systems, smoke detectors, car parks and emergency exists, among others.

Tourist experts believe that the weak performance of hotels and furnished apartments are a detriment to tourist development in Jeddah.

According to official studies and statistics, around half of visitors to Jeddah prefer to stay with their relatives and friends because of doubts about hotels and furnished apartments. “The weak performance is caused by the lack of necessary services that might attract tourists. The only way to improve performance is by making it obligatory for owners of hotels and furnished apartments to provide good services to occupants,” said Khaled Muhammad Fahd Al-Aboud, a member of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s tourist committee.

According to official reports, hotels and furnished apartments are the only part of the real estate sector that was not affected by the recession.

The studies revealed hotel occupancy in Jeddah had been increasing by about two percent annually since 2003, reaching 73 percent in 2008.

The reports, however, noted that only 13 percent of 11 million people who visited Jeddah in 2007 stayed in hotels, while 22 percent of them lived in furnished apartments.

Many visitors believe that the services provided by hotels and furnished apartments are not commensurate with the high prices they are charged to stay there.

Tourist investor Badr Khaled Abdul Mohsen Al-Hikair, however, claims standards have improved and said the number of hotels is increasing in Jeddah every year.

“The Saudi market for hotels and furnished apartments is flourishing and has a good future. The services provided are commensurate with prices,” he said. He noted that people who come to the Kingdom for Haj and Umrah do not usually stay in hotels in Jeddah. “They go directly to Makkah or Madinah,” he said.

With more than 9,600 rooms, Jeddah has about 90 percent of hotel rooms in the country.