We have heard much about a new age for the Kingdom in which tourism will open up and foreigners will be welcome to traipse all over the country. Though with the age set at a minimum of 50, one wonders what condition the tourists will be in and whether they will have the energy to stroll around the Kingdom. Some tourism, however, is better than none. It is an important step on the way to full-scale tourism and who knows? We may one day end up having Mickey Mouse along with Minnie decked out in her regulation abaya entertaining kids of all ages in Arabian-Disney!
The potential is there — one cannot doubt it. The Kingdom is heir to a long and rich history going back as far as 10,000 BC. The civilizations that passed through the peninsula left their mark on the region in the way of building, stone carvings and other architectural sights. This is undeniably impressive and the sad thing is that few are aware of it. It is also an advantage that only a few Gulf countries can boast of.
For the most part, the idea of tourism, except the purely religious kind of visits to Makkah and Madinah, has never been entertained until quite recently. With neighboring countries attracting more and more tourists every season with spectacular shows, world-class entertainment and impressive commercial centers — the time has come for the Kingdom to share in this pie.
While numerous committees deliberate about how to begin, tiptoeing around issues such as unchaperoned women coming to the country, the question of eco-tourism and of building a suitable infrastructure (for example an airport with airconditioners that actually work comes to mind), both time and opportunities are lost. With the effects of Sept. 11 in the United States still reverberating, few Middle Easterners wish to travel to Europe or the United States and many have turned their eyes inwards on the region or further away to the Far East.
Intermittently we hear of tourists who have come to Jeddah or Riyadh as part of the "campaign" to get tourists interested in the region, though one wonders exactly what they have seen. As I had the chance to witness on a recent trip to Taif, the country is still sadly unprepared for local tourists let alone foreign ones. The leaflet left in our suite waxed enthusiastically about the area’s many breathtaking attractions — dams dating back hundreds of years, palaces and forts, a crater 300 meters deep from a long-ago asteroid collision with earth and ancient souks.
Well, good-luck trying to find any of these so-called landmarks that Taif is so proud of! Or indeed of being able to get the hotel you are staying at to provide a guided tour of the city or its surroundings.
In the end, the highlights of our weekend were a ride on the Taif teleferique — part of a recently opened but as yet unfinished project — and feeding the monkeys on the road after having bought some alleged local Taif produce that bore a sticker map of a country curiously resembling Lebanon!
The weather was cool and invigorating but the breathtaking scenes we were promised were nowhere to be found. The many green public gardens indicated on the map turned out to be barren sandy plots of land with a few swings and a metal umbrella for picnickers.
Our last hope was to visit Shubra Palace, an old palace turned into a museum which is only open on Thursdays. The palace was not indicated anywhere on the Farsi map so after an hour of searching the city and doing some detective work, we arrived at the deserted gates of the palace. There we found that it had recently undergone some renovation and is yet to be officially opened by some official or another.
If the Kingdom genuinely hopes to attract tourists, it plainly has a long way to go. From the unfriendly and unhelpful attitude of those involved in the tourist industry to the lack of means of reaching the much-lauded historical sites, the roadblocks are numerous. And the answer doesn’t rest on opening five-star hotels with sumptuously appointed rooms. Instead, areas of historic interest need to be made more accessible; family activities need to be made available; museums and art galleries should be more widespread and the seaside made more family-friendly and most important, everyone would benefit from a sense of humor.
