Saudi Arabia Wants Your Next Vacation

The oil-rich kingdom is betting on tourism to broaden its economy, but will visitors come?

- Stanley Reed

In a makeshift camp under a starry sky, Ghazi Al-Anazi talked about his experience in the fledgling Saudi tourist business. A decade ago, barely in his 20s, he started taking British business associates of his brother to see the wind-carved hills of the Saudi desert.

Now 31, he has a small fleet of SUVs, nearly a dozen employees and a self-taught ability to cater to the whims of visitors from many nations. “I know what they want to do, and what I need to do about it,” he said, ladling out a dinner of barbecued chicken and Middle Eastern salads to a couple of dozen tourists from France, Ukraine, Malaysia, and the US.

Al-Anazi and his business, Ghazi Tours, take up to 900 visitors a month on treks to a dry riverbed dotted with venerable acacia trees north of Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

But he is confident those numbers are about to multiply, as Saudi Arabia begins to open itself up as a major tourist destination. The government recently began issuing tourist visas for the first time, a remarkable shift for a traditionally shuttered society.

And it goes far beyond that: Billions of dollars are being poured into vast tourism projects throughout the kingdom, from flashy resorts to new airports, in a bid to shift the economy away from its dependence on the petroleum industry and the government jobs it finances.

Visiting Saudi Arabia has long been a difficult proposition for everyone except Muslim pilgrims going on Hajj and business travellers. For decades, historic sites have been largely ignored, and hotels and travel services were scarce outside major cities.

Unemployment among Saudi nationals is stubbornly high, about 12 per cent. But the government figures that the travel industry, which employs about 6,00,000 people, can be expanded to create up to one million more jobs, as the need for everything from drivers, chefs and guides to hotel managers and archaeologists expands.