SAUDI Arabia will focus on opening up employment opportunities for nationals and enterprise initiatives for small to medium sized private sector companies in a new national tourism plan scheduled for publication by year end.
This was announced by president and board chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities HRH Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, in a presentation dedicated to development opportunities in Saudi Arabia on the first day of the 5th Arabian Hotel Investment Conference (AHIC) held in Dubai last month.
A 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 would rise from 117,097 to 254,310 apartment units would increase from 101,544 to 185,853 - and 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 (prudent) estimates,” HRH Prince Sultan 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.”
“We have a major programme for human resource development as we see tourism as a major job creator,” he said, adding that a fifth hotel training college will be established at Taif.
Prince Sultan stressed that development in the Kingdom was responding to demand from the domestic market and that the emphasis in the next two years would be to fulfil this need rather than cultivate overseas visitor markets: “More than US$ 10 billion is spent by Saudi Arabians on travelling overseas ... but they are now eager to spend a good part of their holidays at home,” he said.