Originally Posted by
atflyer
Visa can be free if you make a stop on a single SV ticket VIA Jeddah booked on the SV website. Then they even throw in 1 free hotel night. We talk here about a ticket that needs positioning in/flying out of Jeddah, hence on a separate ticket. Then visa are not free. If I am right you can stay maximum 12 hours airside without visa, and booking a flight so close to arrival is always a bit risky SV has usually one daily flight from Asian cities to JED, and if that fails for some reason you are in trouble).
If you book a connection longer than 12 hours, Saudia will let you know about the 12-hour limit. But where you get pushed over that limit by delays, then no-one is bothered: if they do get bothered, it's SV's problem, not yours.
As for the free-hotel, free visa stopover package (sorted of cribbed from Qatar and others) .... as i said, good luck booking it! Giving credit where credit is due, it looks like an attractive initiative: but the good intentions of Saudia's marketing team aren't always well implemented by their IT colleagues, nor do they translate well on the ground. Also note that booking stopovers of over 24H generally boost ticket prices by a couple of hundred dollars.