The business of letting strangers into your home: Meet Saudi Arabia's HiHome

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For Nourah, the truest way to apprehend a country may be to sit at its dinner table Most travel keeps you at arm's length from a place - you observe it, photograph it, pass…

For Nourah, the truest way to apprehend a country may be to sit at its dinner table

Most travel keeps you at arm's length from a place - you observe it, photograph it, pass through it. Something else happened on a trip to Cuba, when the journey led Alsadoun not to a hotel but into a stranger's home. "I wasn't just visiting places or seeing the usual tourist attractions," she says. "I was sitting with a local family, sharing food, having conversations, and getting a glimpse into their everyday life. That personal connection made me understand the culture in a way that a typical tourist experience never could."

Home in Riyadh, she couldn't shake one question: why should a visitor to Saudi Arabia be issued a hotel key, when they might instead be issued a door? Out of that thought came HiHome, a platform built on exactly that premise - an invitation into a house rather than a hotel lobby. Its very first door belonged, fittingly, to her own father. “It was not a conventional business concept, and there were naturally questions about whether people would actually want to enter a Saudi family's home," she says. He said yes regardless. “We weren't asking other Saudi families to open their doors before we were willing to open ours."

HiHome launched in 2019, the very year Saudi Arabia began issuing tourist visas for the first time in its modern history. The flattering shorthand of luck gets waved away. "The timing created an opportunity, but the people, hosts, and experiences are what made the idea meaningful," Alsadoun says.

Then came the year that tested the whole premise to its foundations. Covid dissolved the very ground the business stood on. "Our entire model depended on travel, gatherings, and people coming together, and suddenly all of that stopped," she says. "There was so much uncertainty." What returned, once the world reopened, was something sharper than simple appetite. "People weren't only looking for destinations," she says.

The thornier negotiation was not with a…

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