Saudi Arabia focuses on heritage

Saudi Arabia has undertaken one of the biggest initiatives in the world to develop its heritage and culture centres as part of a major tourism programme.

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Initiatives for the Heritage of Saudi Arabia is a partnership between the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) as the leader of the project, and government organisations along with the private sector and the National Investment Fund.

'The kingdom is witnessing a new era in the development of national heritage economy, under SCTH’s adopted slogan ‘Urban heritage from extinction to prosperity’,' said Prince Sultan bin Salman, SCTH president.

The programme combines all the components of national heritage under one umbrella, and it is aimed at 'restoring' the disconnect between the citizen and his national heritage and rebuilding the human relation with the places of his ancestors, he said.

Also, it aims to strengthen the economic value of the national heritage in achieving a balanced development, and create more job opportunities, especially in the regions far from big metropolitan areas.

The programme includes 144 projects related to antiquities and museums, Islamic history sites, heritage villages, urban heritage sites, and handicrafts.

The initiative aims at the comprehensive development of Islamic history sites in Saudi Arabia; establishment of Islamic history museums; transformation of King Abdul-Aziz historic palaces into national museums; creation of the national registry of antiquities and urban heritage; development of handicrafts industry; completion of 15 museums; development of the national museum; and the creation of a matrix of experiences in the field of national heritage.

The largest project under the initiative involves the centre of Riyadh, a 15-sq-km zone that is now earmarked for revival and development with a budget of about SR10 billion ($2.66 billion).

The government has also entrusted the SCTH with five major sectors to develop and manage within the next five years. One of the more important of these is the crafts industry that is now being transformed into a world-class economic and cultural initiative..

NATIONAL FUND

Saudi Arabia has also announced the creation of a national fund to support tourism development. It is an extensive financial scheme that will provide no-interest financing over seven years of the lifespan of the project for accommodation and tourism development projects.

Meanwhile, the Saudi Academy for Event, Conventions and Conferences will be launched in September 2016. The academy, which is the first of its kind in the Middle East, will be based in Riyadh and focus on the development of human resource to support the convention and exhibition sector.

The kingdom has also launched the Umrah Plus programme, which has opened up the tourism sector for people who come for Umrah.

'We believe that we are just at the beginning of creating a major tourism sector in Saudi Arabia. Today, 28 per cent of the people working in the sector are Saudis and, while this may sound like a low number to many people, it is nevertheless the second largest Saudized sector in the national economy,' said Prince Sultan.

It is anticipated that by 2020, about 1.8 million jobs will be in tourism or tourism-related fields in the kingdom.

Middle East tourism received a little over $49 billion in 2014 and Saudi Arabia accounted for $16 billion of that.

Speaking at the 2016 International Architectural Conservation Conference and Exhibition held Dubai in February, Prince Sultan said: 'We all realise what we encounter currently in the declined oil resources. Relying on one exhausting economic resource and facing fluctuation of its prices has subjected our economy to many risks.

'Throughout the past years, I have been emphasising that the national heritage, namely the urban heritage, could be amongst the economic alternatives that contribute to the diversity of economic resources and job opportunities in the region. That is because 'the urban heritage represents inexhaustible oil wells.'

He pointed out that the SCTH has adopted a programme of cultural tourism that is mostly implemented in the built heritage areas. Real steps have are made to sustain this aspect via establishing the Saudi Heritage Hospitality Company (Nuzul) through a partnership between the Public Investment Fund and the private sector. Nuzul works now on restoring the heritage sites in order to be used as accommodation facilities and heritage hotels through signing local partnerships around all the kingdom’s provinces.

The local community is being motivated to participate in the built heritage preservation programme in the heritage villages and historic city centres. Hence, the locals are provided with technical and financial support to restore their houses and villages through ‘Omran’, which is a joint programme between SCTH and the Ministry of the Municipalities and Rural Affairs.