meet saudiarabia NEWDEVELOPMENTS
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A SIGNIFICANT AREA OF GROWTH FOR SAUDI ARABIA IS
TOURISM.AROUND 20 PERCENT OF VISITORS COME FOR BUSINESS –THE REST ARE LEISURE TOURISTS AND RELIGIOUS PILGRIMS
Still in Jeddah, the soon-to-be-completed
47-storey Al Jawharah, developed by Damac Properties, will be the first new construc- tion following a relaxation of building rules to allow skyscrapers on the city’s waterfront. Partnering with Versace Home, the property is expected to feature the most exclusive residential apartments in the kingdom. Property developer Limitless is behind the
SAR45 billion (US$12 billion) Al Wasl commu- nity in Riyadh. Once finished, the 1,400- hectare community will have more than 50,000 homes, eight shopping complexes, several five-star hotels with conference facilities, schools, mosques, sports facilities, civic buildings, public centres and commer- cial offices. It will also feature 300 hectares of landscaped greenery and parks and an environmentally friendly transport system.
THE FUTURE OF TOURISM A significant area of growth for Saudi Arabia is tourism. Around 20 percent of visitors come for business – the rest are leisure tourists and reli- gious pilgrims. At the time of going to press, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) expected the country to have served 14.87 million tourists in 2012 and for the number to increase by another million by 2014. According to Business Monitor Inter-
national’s (BMI’s) Saudi Arabia Tourism Report Q1 2013, the number of tourist
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arrivals is expected to increase by an average of 8.5 percent each year to the end of the forecast period in 2017. The BMI report concluded that “one of the main drivers for the tourism industry is religious tourism”, adding that “business travel is also a growing area, given Saudi Arabia’s status as the world’s largest oil exporter”. It comes as no surprise that Saudi Arabia is
seeing unprecedented growth in hotel rooms to cope with the influx with the 317,000 keys estimated at the beginning of 2013, increasing to 424,000 by the end of 2016. One of the main pillars of Saudi Arabia’s
foreign tourism industry is the number of religious pilgrims who visit the coun- try’s holiest sites Al Madinah and Makkah. An estimated 3.2 million Muslims visited in 2012 for the Hajj and Umrah pilgrim- ages, according to Saudi Foreign Embassy. Business travel is also a growing area, given
Saudi Arabia’s status as the world’s largest oil exporter and its initiatives to diversify the economy. Observers also say that Saudi Arabia’s commitment to tourism is expected to see increased spending over the coming years for both international and domestic visitors. Domestic tourism is also being pursued
by the SCTA in an effort to capture some of the capital spent by the millions of Saudi citizens who would usually travel abroad each year, mainly within the Middle East.
BUILDING BETTER INFRASTRUCTURE The first phase of Al Mashaaer Al Mugad- assah Southern metro line began operation in November 2010. By 2014, it will be part of a 500-kilometre network complete with high-speed trains connecting key desti- nations across the kingdom and by 2020 Saudi Arabia expects to have added another 1,000 kilometres of line, which will link the Red Sea in the west and the Arabian Gulf in the east by railway for the first time. The Haramain High Speed Railway will
come into service in early 2014. After a five- year build time, trains that reach speeds of 330 kilometres an hour will slash journey times for millions of passengers a year. Costing SAR35 billion (US$9.4 billion), the 450-kilometre high-speed rail network will link Al Madinah and Makkah via the new King Abdullah Economic City, Rabigh, King Abdulaziz International Airport and Jeddah, which has a population of 8.5 million. In Jeddah, another new 950-kilometre
railway line is being constructed, linking the city to the capital Riyadh. Known as the Saudi Land Bridge, it is estimated the project will cost at least SAR26 billion (US$7 billion) and will primarily be for freight. It will be the first rail link between the Red Sea and the Gulf. The journey will take six hours, half the time it currently takes by bus and the line will eventually be extended
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