Saudi Arabia · Eastern Province
Where to Stay in Khobar, Eastern Province
Khobar sits on the Persian Gulf shore of the Eastern Province, a coastal city chartered in 1935 that forms part of the Dammam metropolitan area.
Find your area →
Where to stay in Khobar
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Khobar makes a natural base within the Dammam metropolitan area, sitting on the Persian Gulf shore between its two neighbour cities. The city faces the water directly, its streets running back from the coast of the Eastern Province toward the flat ground inland, so a room near the front puts the Gulf and the seafront within easy reach. Stay by the shore for the water.
This coastal ground suits travellers who want the sea at the door and the rest of the metropolitan area close, with Dammam and Dhahran both a short drive along the joined-up coast. It keeps the whole conurbation within reach. Away from the front the city runs inland in a grid of newer streets, quieter and further from the water but still tied by road to Dammam and Dhahran.
The inland districts feel different from the seafront. Held back from the Persian Gulf, they trade the view for calmer streets and shorter distances to the highways that bind the three cities together across the Eastern Province. Rooms here suit drivers more than walkers.
You reach the shore and the neighbouring cities by car rather than on foot, but the whole Dammam metropolitan area lies within a short run. Choose the seafront for the Gulf itself and the shortest walk to the water, or the inland grid if you want quiet and quick roads out to Dammam, Dhahran, and the Green Hall beyond. Pick your distance from the shore and settle in.
About Khobar
What is Khobar known for?
Al Khobar is known as one of the three cities of the Dammam metropolitan area, set on the coast of the Persian Gulf in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The city grew from a small settlement chartered in 1935. Its neighbours are close.
Together with Dammam and Dhahran it makes up the residential core of the Persian Gulf region of the country, and the concert venue of the Green Hall in nearby Dammam serves the whole of that shared metropolitan area along the shore.
What are the main landmarks in Khobar?
Khobar draws its character from the Persian Gulf front rather than from a single monument, the shore of the Eastern Province giving the city its main outlook toward the water. The sea is the great sight. Along the joined-up coast the city runs into its neighbours, and the cultural life of the Dammam metropolitan area gathers partly at the Green Hall in Dammam, the concert venue that serves Khobar, Dammam, and Dhahran alike.
Between the three cities the seafront and the shared institutions of the metropolitan area stand in for the older landmarks that a longer-settled city would keep.
What is the history of Khobar?
Khobar is a young city, chartered in 1935 on the Persian Gulf shore of the Eastern Province. Before that date the site was little more than a small coastal settlement on the flat ground beside the water. Its growth came fast.
Through the decades after its founding the town spread inland from the shore and joined with its neighbours, until Khobar, Dammam, and Dhahran had grown together into the single Dammam metropolitan area that lines this stretch of the Gulf. The three cities became one urban run. What had been a scatter of coastal villages turned into the residential core of the Persian Gulf region of Saudi Arabia, its streets laid out in the modern grids of the twentieth century rather than the lanes of an old town.
Khobar took the seaward part of that conurbation. Facing the coast of the Eastern Province, it kept its front to the Gulf while Dammam and Dhahran filled the ground behind, and the shared institutions of the metropolitan area, among them the Green Hall in Dammam, came to serve all three. The city's short history is bound up with the Gulf and with the two neighbours that grew up beside it along the shore.
Where is Khobar?
Khobar lies on the coast of the Persian Gulf, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia along the country's Gulf shore. The city sits on flat, low ground where the land meets the water, with no relief to break the run of the coast. The setting is level and open.
Its built-up area joins seamlessly with Dammam and Dhahran, the three merging across the plain into the single Dammam metropolitan area that lines this part of the Gulf. Inland the ground stays flat and dry, running back from the shore into the wider desert of the Eastern Province.
What is the climate of Khobar?
Khobar has a hot desert climate, tempered a little by its position on the Persian Gulf coast of the Eastern Province. Summers are long, extremely hot, and humid. The moist Gulf air makes the heat feel heavier along the shore than on the dry ground inland.
On this Gulf coast the cool season stays brief and mild. Rain is rare across the year, falling only in brief spells in the cooler months, while the flat coast around the Dammam metropolitan area lies open to the sun and the sea wind. The Gulf keeps the air damp near the water.
How do you get to Khobar?
Khobar is reached most easily through the wider Dammam metropolitan area, which it shares with Dammam and Dhahran on the Persian Gulf coast. The three cities are bound by road. Highways run the length of the joined-up shore, so arrivals cross easily between Khobar and its neighbours across the Eastern Province, and the airport serving the metropolitan area lies a short drive inland at Dhahran.
A causeway also carries traffic across the Gulf from the city. From there the flat coastal roads lead straight into Khobar along the water.
Good for
More cities in Eastern Province
Updated July 2026