Apologies didn't want to come across as patronising, I'm certainly in the camp of 'KSA is creating hotels for tourists that don't exist'. But certainly in Makkah the number of tourists is seemingly increasing, hotels such as swissotel and Movenpick over there are very much used by the the masses. Raffles is quite an expensive option so I think sofitel will slot itself nicely in between. Also they overlooked the point that none of the hotels are there at ground level so getting the lift can take hours...