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MARCH/APRIL 2013


Saudi Arabia


BRIDGING THE GAP 108


IT’S ODDS ON YOU’VE already learned, to your cost or frustration, that fast-emerging business destinations can be slow to adopt the seamless connectivity of uniform corporate demand. Take the BRIC countries (Brazil,


Russia, India and China), for example. To a greater or lesser extent, each has presented business travel planners with online barriers, investment hurdles or cultural idiosyncrasies in the course of migration to automated global programmes. In short, the US-inspired


consolidation model has been adopted in Europe, but does not always immediately gain root elsewhere. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the latest case in point. Controversial politics, social strictures and the knock-on effects of the Arab Spring aside, this is an aspiring global player with ambitions to be a key regional hub. Combined with geographical size and strategic influence, it ticks the boxes for foreign organisations who want to expand into the country – but the UK’s leading travel management companies


SAUDI ARABIA


Given their dramatically different cultures, can West and Middle East find ways to consolidate business practices? Jonathan Hart reports


(TMCs) say that, at the moment, it lacks the maturity, integrated expertise and tools to implement globally mandated travel policies.


HIGH GROWTH MARKET Saudi is designated as a high growth market by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), which cites the country’s diversification from oil, economic reforms, market liberalisation and a growing private sector as primary ingredients for growth in multiple sectors. Moreover, led by hotels, an airport, transport and education, the fiscally liquid state is spending lavishly on an infrastructural makeover. With UK exports already worth an annual £3 billion, plus an estimated £260 million currently earmarked for capital projects, it is said by UKTI to be offering investment opportunities


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