I have been spending the last few days watching videos of my trips to China and Iran.
Many fond memories were brought back of the places I visited and the people I met there.
Coincidentally, I read in the papers about a huge tourism project that was being undertaken by a Saudi group with the encouragement of the Supreme Commission for Tourism.
I was very disturbed by this news.
Our beloved country has a long way to go before it can qualify as a viable tourist destination.
Outside of the cities of Makkah, Madinah and Jeddah most Saudis are not used to dealing with foreigners except as workers and regard outsiders with a great deal of suspicion and doubt.
This view will take many years, if not decades, to change and in the meantime the country will remain unattractive to all but tourists with the greatest curiosity or thickest skin.
Let me give some examples from my own travels:
China is a communist country as we all know. It also has the reputation of being a police state.
Believe me; the police presence here is by far greater than anything I saw in China. I traveled across a large part of China and never once did I see or was stopped at a police checkpoint.
As for my passport, the only people who asked for it were at hotels and museums because there was a special price for foreigners’ tickets.
I was allowed to photograph everywhere except, understandably, inside temples.
I was frequently accosted by Chinese people who would ask where I was from. And when I said from Saudi Arabia they would smile and say, welcome to China; we hope you have a nice time here.
Wow, do you think if a Chinese tourist went to Baha or Hail he would be greeted in this way?
If you believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Another example is Iran.
When I arrived there I was greeted by the passport control officer with a smile and a quick stamp on my passport.
No one asked for my passport again except the hotels I stayed in or the museums and historical sites I visited, due to there being special prices for foreign tourists.
I was allowed to photograph everywhere without the slightest hindrance except within mosques; and even then I was allowed after getting permission.
I will leave it to you to imagine what would have happened to me if I was an Iranian tourist photographing in Saudi cities.
I was stopped many times by curious Iranians who wanted to know where I was from. When they found out they would smile and say, welcome to our country; we hope you enjoy your stay with us.
I defy you to find any Saudi who would say that to a non-western tourist in our country.
We have a very long way to go before we are ready to receive tourists.
To be a country ready for tourism requires a cultural adjustment to enable Saudis to accept that other people are their equals and that visitors are not foreign spies coming to corrupt them.
This is why I find it irresponsible of the Supreme Commission for Tourism to encourage Saudi businessmen to invest tens or even hundreds of millions of riyals in tourism projects that will never work due to the factors I have just mentioned.
If, the Supreme Commission for Tourism wishes to have these projects then it should build them itself and if they prove commercially viable then and only then should the private sector be encouraged to join.
It is high time the public sector stopped using the private sector as a convenient guinea pig.
