During an event celebrating surpassing the 100 million tourists benchmark in 2023, Saudi Tourism Minister Ahmed al-Khateeb has announced the country’s plan to complement the state funding in the tourism industry with up to $80 billion private investment.
On top of the $800 billion the Saudi government plans to allocate for the development of the country’s tourism industry as part of the Saudi Vision 2030 programme, a project started by Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, in an attempt to diversify the country’s economy from oil, al-Khateeb said the goal is to raise another $60 billion to $80 billion in private investment by 2030.
This is a very ambitious target.
Ahmed al-Khateeb, Saudi Arabia Minister of Tourism
To facilitate this goal, especially for foreign investors, the Ministry of Tourism has introduced a new scheme, the Tourism Investment Enablers Program (TIEP). The program includes some regulatory reforms and reduces fees to incentivise foreigners to invest in Saudi Arabia while putting the hospitality at the top through a Hospitality Investment Enablers package.
The initial goal of the Vision 2030 was to attract 100 million yearly tourists by 2030, but since the benchmark was already achieved last year, the new aim is for 150 million yearly tourists, striving for 70 million visitors from abroad. From the 100 million tourists last year, only about 27 million were international visitors, but the country is counting on Indians and Chinese to boost foreign tourism numbers, as well as on growing interest from the UK, France and Germany.
Among other projects that are part of Vision 2030, the country is developing what it calls “the city of the future”, complete with a 170-km-long line of skyscrapers, along with several mega projects that are meant to completely transform Riyadh by the end of the decade. A new national airline, Riyadh Air, was also launched in March 2023, with the ambition of tripling Saudi Arabia’s air traffic to 330 million passengers by the end of the decade and turning the country into a regional travel hub.
Moreover, tourism campaigns featuring football stars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have been developed to increase the international appeal of the destination. The country has been recently rumoured to even consider a partial lift of the ban on alcohol soon. The deadline of the Vision will coincide with the year Riyadh will be hosting the World Expo, in preparation for which visa procedures have been facilitated for 49 countries.
