Are you tired of Jeddah’s traffic jams? Are you disappointed by the limited access to the Red Sea beaches — to say nothing of the polluted state they are in? Are you fed up with the crowded shopping malls, expensive rental apartments and cost of living during the summer?
Only a short distance away is a small sleepy city on the Red Sea; it is slowly becoming known as a getaway for Jeddawis and an alternative summer destination for vacationers in the Kingdom and neighboring Gulf countries.
Yanbu, with its tranquility, pristine beaches and beautiful gardens, is already a favorite of those who know about it. It is one of the few cities in the Kingdom that easily combines industrial and tourism sites in perfect harmony. Soon with the completion of Yanbu 2 Industrial City Mega-Project, the city will become a magnet for many seeking employment opportunities, business growth and a new vacation hotspot.
It also will not hurt to have, in a few years’ time, the King Abdullah Economic City in Rabigh nearby, increasing the potential for business and leisure expansions. The sleepy little town will soon become a full modern city.
Yanbu, or Yanbu Industrial City as it is known, is some 350 km northwest of Jeddah on the Red Sea and is established as an industrial and investment hub. Now it is also pushing ahead as a tourism attraction while maintaining and insisting on its protective environmental policies. Family vacationers will find well-maintained parks, recreational locations and restaurants all along the coast. Sea lovers will enjoy swimming, scuba diving, the rich coral reefs as well as docking for all kinds of boats.
“We have programs to attract tourists during the summer holidays which have proved successful. During the past five years we have had increasing numbers of vacationers,” said Akeeli bin Dhaifallah Khawaji, general director of the Royal Commission of Jubail and Yanbu.
He added that there were many tourism investment opportunities and that Yanbu was expected to become the most beautiful resort on the Red Sea north of Jeddah.
The Royal Commission of Jubail and Yanbu has established an entertainment island, connected to the mainland by a bridge, as a center for different kinds of sea sports. It has also set up sports centers for football and tennis, gymnasiums and swimming pools as well as an equestrian center. From the beginning, the city planners made sure that with all these industrial and tourism developments that both infrastructure and public services were expanded.
One of the main attractions in Yanbu is the annual flower exhibition held in March. The city planners were keen on its having a green city and so they planted hundreds of trees and created gardens all over the city.
To emphasize the “green” personality of the city, there is an annual flower and garden exhibition at which thousands of flowers are elegantly displayed in magnificent natural carpets of delicate design.
During this year’s ten-day flower exhibition, more than 100,000 visitors came to see the designs which used more than 170 thousand flowers in a 3,000 square-meter area.
“The commission depends on producing all the flowers that it needs from its nursery. The commission also coordinates with a group of merchants and specialists in home and garden furniture, decorating plants, natural flowers, fruit trees, modern irrigation systems and other agricultural items in order to exhibit and sell their products and provide advice for the annual flower exhibition,” said Khawaji.
Recently, the director of the Tourism Information Center project at the Supreme Commission for Tourism, Ibrahim Al-Kreda, visited Yanbu and met officials there to talk about how the center there can better serve tourists. The center in Yanbu opened five years ago and it provides information on tourist sites and hotels, on the Royal Commission and the businesses in the city, and it distributes brochures and other publications.
