Team building in Jeddah
A port that spent fourteen centuries meeting everybody
Jeddah is the Red Sea port, and for centuries it was the way in for pilgrims heading to Makkah. That is the whole explanation for the old city: the families who settled in it came from Hadhramaut, from Persia, from India and from the Levant, and the buildings say so.
What we propose is in Al Balad, the historic district. Narrow lanes that stay in shade most of the day, houses of coral stone, and the carved wooden fronts that everyone photographs without knowing what they are for.
Worth knowing
November to March, like the rest of the Gulf, but Jeddah is humid. The temperature on the thermometer and the temperature on your skin are two different numbers here, and a route has to be shorter than the same route inland.
Al Balad is an evening place. It wakes up when the sun drops, which suits an activity that ends with something to eat and makes the middle of the afternoon the wrong moment to start.
Ramadan shifts everyone’s hours and changes the rules about eating and drinking in public.
Things people don’t always know
The old houses are built out of the sea. The blocks are coral, cut from the Red Sea reef and laid with lime, with timber courses through the walls to hold them together. It is light, it insulates, and it is the reason the district looks like nowhere else.
The wooden fronts are machinery, not decoration. The roshan, the carved bay windows, catch the sea breeze and push it through the rooms, and they let the people inside look out without being looked at. They are air conditioning and privacy in one object.
Al Balad is a UNESCO World Heritage site, listed in 2014 as the gate to Makkah. Much of it was close to collapse twenty years ago, and the restoration is still going on street by street: what is open to walk through changes from one season to the next.
What we bring to Jeddah
Here we propose the Urban Game and the Treasure Hunt, which both work well in lanes this narrow: the group stays close together and the clues can be physical. If you already have something in mind we adapt it to the place and to your logistics; if you haven’t, we choose it together. All the activities →
Let’s talk about your next team building
You don’t need to have picked a format yet. Tell us what you want your team to take home, how many of you there are and where you’ll be, and we’ll do the rest: within 24 hours you get a considered proposal for your case, with the formats that hold up against your numbers, and what each one leaves the team the day after.
Prefer to talk? · info @ teambuildingsaudi.com