RIYADH: Janadriya 2009 comes to an end today. Saudi Arabia’s annual Heritage and Culture Festival that celebrates the country’s different regions received hundreds of thousands of visitors over the past two weeks.

But according to festival participants, the planning and logistics of the festival is not keeping up with its growing popularity.

Expatriates in particular — who came to the festival with a genuine curiosity — said they were frustrated by the lack of English translations of signage.

“How could we understand anything when there are no signs in English? I did not understand anything and I could not explain to my daughter which part of Saudi these sections are,” said Ben, a visiting expatriate from South Africa. (That festival was laid out with different sections, each underscoring one region of the Kingdom.)

Guttstein, a consultant from Germany visiting Janadriya, also said he did not get as much from the festival as he could have with bilingual information.

“The efforts are beautiful and the people are nice. I feel like I am back to the old days,” he said, referring to the replicas of old Arabian life and culture present at the festival. “The picture would have been complete if there were English signs for the foreign visitors like myself.”

Some visitors were frustrated by the difficulties in navigating the festival grounds.

“When I ask a security guard about a special section, she either tells me to continue walking straight until I find it or that I have to search for it myself,” said Kholood Al-Maiman, a Saudi woman visiting the festival with her family.

Women participants in the Baha pavilion said that this year they were allotted smaller space to showcase their crafts: They were squeezed in a small space inside a tent with 18 other people.

“I volunteered to participate to show the tradition of my area like many others here,” said one of the participants. “The current situation is unfair.”

She also said the number of women participating to show traditional stuff was less compared to last year. One of the major draws of the festival is the ability to interact, view and purchase handmade crafts from women from different parts of the Kingdom.

Jawaher Al-Duhaim, media supervisor in the women’s media committee, said she understood that more could be done.

“I cannot talk on behalf of everyone, but I agree with you that there is much work to be done ... I can’t do everything on my own,” she said.

Journalists also complained about the media center saying that only one person was working there. “We came at 11 a.m. and everything was closed including the media center,” said one reporter. “When do they want us to work?”

Amal Al-Juhani, a Saudi writer, said she arrived at a scheduled time for an event that started about two hours late. And when the time came for the speakers to talk, they didn’t use microphones.

“It looked like a puppet show,” she said.

A survey of attendees and participants identified three major issues that could be resolved next year — maps, perhaps using visual symbols, that allow attendees to easily navigate the grounds of the festival; bilingual educational materials for those interested in learning about the country’s culture and heritage; and more guides to offer useful information or assistance.