How Saudi Arabia’s tourism dream proved too good to be true

You have to hand it to Saudi Arabia. When Mohammed bin Salman announced his intention to turn the desert nation into a $100bn tourism destination within a decade, he was smart enough to realise he’d need something special to make that happen.

For the millennial crown prince, there was one obvious solution to that conundrum: a flurry of breathtaking “mega projects” that would need to be seen to be believed, and which would help lure international tourists who might not otherwise have dreamed of visiting the Islamic kingdom.

First, there was Red Sea Global, announced back in 2017, with plans to open a series of state-of-the-art resorts on the natural islands floating a few miles off Saudi’s western coast. Not only would the resort islands offer Maldives-style luxury and simpler visa rules, but they would also be entirely carbon neutral: thus assuaging any environmental guilt amongst the great and the good.

Shortly after that, he announced Neom: a $500bn mega-city and investment zone that would unleash a Dubai-style building boom in the country’s deserted northern regions.

At the heart of Neom would be a sci-fi-style city known as The Line: a 170-kilometre-long mirrored metropolis, taller than the Empire State Building and served by flying taxis and robotic helpers.

Renders showed a tower of jutting micro-apartments, clad in luscious greenery and connected by sky bridges.

It didn’t stop with new cities. There were similarly big plans for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s austere capital. A city that had once outlawed cinemas would now be transformed into one of the world’s entertainment and sporting capitals.

At the heart of this vision would be a sprawling theme park complex over in the dusty outpost of Qiddiya that would rival anything Florida had to offer.

There would also be a sizeable cash injection to turn the historic fort-like encampment in At-Turaif (considered the birthplace of the modern Saudi state) into a world-leading tourist destination.

The idea was that this Unesco World Heritage Site would compete with the likes of the Giza pyramids and the ancient city of Petra, bringing in cultured, higher-spending tourists.

If it all sounded too good to be true – well, you might have been on to something. Less than 10 years since Mohammed bin Salman dazzled audiences with his transformational vision, Saudi’s tourism dream appears to be slipping away – at least when it comes to the mega-projects.

End of the Line

The biggest casualty on that front has been The Line, the plan for which appears to be melting away quicker than an ice cream in the blazing Saudi sunshine.

Last month, a bombshell Financial Times investigation revealed just how far the Saudis are from accomplishing their vision of “the city of the future”, raising serious questions as to whether the whole thing will end up as a busted flush.

It isn’t just that construction has been racked by delays and spiralling costs. Some of the initial designs have been exposed as essentially unworkable: one engineer recalled having to tell the Saudi officials that it would be impossible to suspend a 30-storey building upside down from a large bridge.

Not only would the building sway as the earth turned, but it would require a Herculean feat of engineering just to make the plumbing flush upwards.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Line has failed to attract private investment, meaning that the costs – estimated to run into the trillions – will instead fall on the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund.

But with oil prices halving since 2022, even this may not be sufficient.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a giant Saudi construction project has been put on ice due to falling oil prices.

Fans of particularly tall buildings may remember when the country announced its breathless plans to build the Kingdom Tower: a one-kilometre-high skyscraper in Jeddah that would dwarf Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and put Saudi Arabia’s second city of Jeddah on the map.

Not long after construction began in 2013, the project ran into trouble, not least when oil prices plunged in 2015.

According to the latest reports, the tower (now renamed the Jeddah Tower) will be completed in 2028, a decade behind schedule. However, the architects behind the project haven’t confirmed whether it will still hit the one-kilometre milestone.

Where are all the tourists?

And what of the other tourist-friendly mega-projects that were supposed to turbocharge Saudi’s holiday industry? Progress has been slow.

Over in the Red Sea, around one quarter of the way down Saudi’s coastline, the first handful of island resorts have opened up, run by St. Regis and Ritz-Carlton. Though visitor numbers have been well below target, with just 50,000 guests against a goal of 300,000.

Things are a little more positive in Riyadh. When I visited last winter, I was bowled over by At-Turaif, where Saudi cash has paid for new walkways throughout the old Arabic city and a state-of-the-art reception centre to tell you more about it.

That said, it wasn’t exactly teeming with tourists: I counted around two dozen during my one-hour walk around the complex. It was something of a surprise given that official statistics show that, across the country as a whole, international arrivals have risen by 69.6 per cent since 2019, from 17.5 million to 27.4 million per year.

I also visited bombastic Boulevard City, the glitzy entertainment complex on the outskirts of Riyadh, which features a life-sized recreation of Times Square and various walk-through attractions based on American entertainment franchises.

Again, the place was pretty quiet, with most of the other guests appearing to be Saudi locals.

Who knows, maybe that will change now that the Boulevard area has opened its biggest attraction yet: a pop-up indoor theme park in collaboration with the world’s most popular YouTuber, the 27-year-old American Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast.

The project hasn’t gone down brilliantly with many of Mr Beast’s 450 million subscribers, some of whom have criticised him for partnering with the Saudis, though it should boost the visibility of Riyadh’s entertainment quarter.

How much that pays off remains to be seen. But I suspect it will probably prove a smarter investment than some of the others that are on the table.

Throwing tens of millions at a popular internet celebrity to lend his name to your project, or spending billions on an unworkable experimental city that might never see the light of day? I know which one I’d pick.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]