DUBAI: Saudi Arabia has plans to attract 88 million tourists and generate more than SR101 billion in tourism revenue by 2020, Prince Sultan bin Salman, president and chairman of the board of Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) said yesterday.
He was addressing an international audience at the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference (AHIC) that opened at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai.
In his presentation on development opportunities in the Kingdom, Prince Sultan said that a new national tourism plan scheduled for publication by year’s end would focus on opening up employment opportunities for nationals and enterprising initiatives for small to medium-sized private sector companies. Long term vision for the country’s hospitality sector estimates visitor numbers will nearly double from 47 million in 2008 to 88 million by 2020, while the number of hotel rooms will rise from 117,097 to 254,310 and apartment units will increase from 101,544 to 185,853. In addition, employment in the industry is set to grow from 1.1 million to 1.5 million.
“I think the numbers will be even more than these estimates,” the prince said. “Tourism touches every service provider — for example, the government has approved bank financing to process loans to fund heritage projects (for small and medium size enterprises), and we will announce a national crafts and heritage industry plan to incubate projects in this sector.
He pointed to major developments already underway in the Kingdom: “In Jeddah alone, there is a project with Solidere to redevelop the historic center while we have 17km of untouched beachfront in the city center,” he said.
“We are working on the historic ports of the Red Sea and the railway connecting western Saudi Arabia to the east coast. The Red Sea will be one of the biggest growth areas with up to 21 new destinations — indeed, we will announce at least one or two of these new projects by the end of this year.”
“The biggest problem we have is the number of Saudis traveling abroad; we need to encourage them to stay at home,” he said.
“More than $ 10 billion is spent by Saudis travelling overseas but they are now eager to spend a good part of their holidays at home,” he said.
“We aim to capture five percent of this but with the trend to ‘holiday at home,’ this could be bigger — there is a large gap between supply and demand with areas such as weekend traffic showing major growth potential.”
Other major initiatives include the Al-Uqair project in the Eastern Province, the Farasan Islands in Jizan Province where one of five new airports is planned, and Taif, site of another new airport plus the Souk Okaz project with heritage and meeting facilities.
To diversify the tourism product, Prince Sultan said other initiatives included the launch of eco-lodges and farm hotels, as well as heritage accommodation: “We have already started licensing several projects in these areas, and are talking to some of the major hotel chains about these things,” he added.
Underlining the potential for tourism development in Saudi Arabia, Prince Sultan said the economy had not slowed, despite the global downturn: “Our government budget in 2009 is the biggest ever in order to keep projects on-stream with an unsurpassed expansion of the infrastructure. Our economy is based on factors that make it more resilient to fluctuations.”
The three-day event, that will end tomorrow, have scheduled nine plenary sessions, 15 interactive workshops and 22 hours of informal networking.
Tomorrow, senior vice president of the Veratect Corporation, Kevin Hart, will address delegates via a special live link from Chicago to discuss recent developments concerning the outbreak of swine flu and how the global tourism industry can prepare to cope with incidents of this kind.
According to AHIC co-organizer, Jonathan Worsley, advance warning of this kind can make a huge difference in times of emergencies.