The mission of the Supreme Commission for Tourism (SCT) is to develop and promote tourism in the Kingdom through effective private and public sector partnerships. Over the next two decades SCT is supposed to assist in creating a minimum of 1.6 million jobs related to tourism.
To create those jobs it is necessary to grow the Tourism industry and as a part of that effort SCT has developed a bilingual website, www.sauditourism.gov.sa, targeted toward potential tourists. The website gives a very brief overview of the various tourist destinations in Saudi Arabia.
The English version of the website is not unattractive. It’s just not very useful. In general the website gives minimal information about some locations and mostly it only lists places and their telephone numbers. For example it mentions that the Kingdom has more than 60 museums, but then it only gives name, city and telephone number as information about each museum. The section about Travel Tips talks briefly about the abaya but no photographs of women wearing abayas are at the site. There’s not even a picture of an abaya in a shop window. The section about festivals and events doesn’t give any information about events in the Kingdom in 2004. The website is also plagued by grammar mistakes and broken links.
The sad thing is that with better development the SCT website could be an important generator of revenue. Take a look at nearby Dubai. Various departments and entities in the Emirate have numerous tourism sites online. There is even a special website for Dubai’s shopping and summer festivals at www.mydsf.ae. The bottom line is that Web content is easy to add and SCT should quickly move toward making their site the complete information resource for tourism activities in the Kingdom.