JEDDAH, 1 March 2005 — The Foreign Ministry has issued 5,537 tourist visas to help Americans, Europeans and Africans visit the Kingdom this year under a Saudi Arabian Airlines program titled “Discover Saudi Arabia.”
Yousuf Abdul Qader Atiyya, the airline’s assistant vice president for customer services and supervisor of the program, said the Saudia program was aimed at promoting domestic tourism. The first group of tourists under this program came in the end of January from the Italian city of Milan. “We also brought tourists from France and Taiwan during February,” he pointed out.
More than 5,000 Americans, Europeans and Japanese have visited the Kingdom since the program was first introduced in 1996, Atiyya said. Some 1,100 Japanese came from Osaka on Saudia flights, he added.
The tourists came on one- to two-week package programs organized by Saudia agents abroad and were taken to resorts and heritage sites in Jeddah, Riyadh, Abha, Dammam, Najran and Madain Saleh.
