JEDDAH — The Gulf region, according to the Federation of GCC Chambers, is expected to attract 150 million tourists by the year 2020. That figure is the result of massive investment projects amounting to $12.5 trillion in the region. “The available information shows that Gulf countries will invest a total of $380 billion in tourism up to 2018,” said the President of the Federation Essam Abdullah Fakhroo. He was speaking at the three-day Gulf Investment and Tourism Forum, which was opened here on Saturday night by Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal.
Middle Eastern and African countries attracted only 3 percent of the world’s 1.5 billion tourists in 2007. Europe and America accounted for 87 percent and Asia for 10 percent, Fakhroo said. According to research from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), tourism contributes 30 percent to world economies, he said. The council predicts an average increase in the travel sector in the Middle East to 10 percent due to inflation. International tourism arrivals increased in 2007 by nearly 6 percent, totaling nearly 900 million tourists and marking the fourth successive year that increase in arrivals had exceeded its long-standing trend of 4 percent.
Saeed Asiri, president of the forum’s organizing committee, highlighted the Asir Region’s experience, which has turned it into a leading tourist destination in the Kingdom.
Abdullah Al-Johani, deputy secretary-general of the Supreme Commission for Tourism (SCT), gave a speech on behalf of the commission’s Secretary-General Prince Sultan ibn Salman. He said tourism over the past five years in the Gulf region had contributed to national economies by increasing revenue and creating thousands of jobs. Countries have made use of their strategic geographical location, heritage and economic resources to boost the tourism sector.
He said that the SCT had set out a general strategy to develop local tourism. The strategy aims to increase the tourism sector’s contribution to 18 percent of the GNP, in addition to creating 1 million direct and indirect jobs. He said that the tourism industry in the Kingdom was worth some SR61 billion annually. There are 12,000 historical and cultural sites of which 965 are suitable for tourism development.
Prominent Saudi businessman Abdul Rahman Faqeeh compared the number of tourists in European countries to the number in Saudi Arabia. He pointed out that according to the most recent report by the Tourism Information and Research Center (MAS), the number of tourists visiting the Kingdom was 10,962,000 but that that figure “mainly represents the number of Umrah and Haj pilgrims and visitors for business purposes.”
He said he had not been able to find out the number of visitors who come “to enjoy Jeddah’s Corniche or Abha’s summer resorts or pre-Islamic historical sites and so on.” He added, “The type of tourists that we are targeting is very small in comparison to the number of pilgrims — and the SCT has not made much effort to attract them. Tourism has not been taken advantage of as it should have been. Our income from it should be much greater than what it is today — maybe ten times.
He emphasized the islands off the Kingdom’s Red Sea coast, the historical sites, both Islamic and pre-Islamic, and the magical desert as key attractions for both foreign and domestic tourists.
He mentioned six obstacles that hinder the development of tourism in the Kingdom. The first is the difficulty of obtaining visas for tourists. This is followed by the lack of incentives for investors and then the non-availability of basic infrastructure.
The fourth is the difficulty of obtaining visas to recruit workers needed in the field of tourism, the non-availability of government financing and the lack of government support in the form of low-cost electricity, for example.