Saudi 2020 and the plan to attract tourists – will it work?

Photo: Western tourists walk through a market in Nuayriyyah, Saudi Arabia on February 8, 2007. Picture taken February 8, 2007. REUTERS/Hamad Mohammed 

The likes of Bhutan, Namibia and Guatemala have long featured on intrepid travelers’ to-do lists, but a new destination could soon rival those far-flung locales as an unlikely tourism hot-spot: Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom hopes it can extend its tourism industry beyond the religious pilgrimages of haj and umrah, in December announcing it will start issuing tourist visas in the first quarter of 2018. Other reforms specifically targeted at easing socio-cultural restrictions support this decision that will directly open up the conservative country to visitors: women will be allowed to drive by June this year, the 35-year-old ban on cinemas was lifted last month, and for the first time in Saudi Arabia, just last week women were allowed to attend a men’s soccer match.

As part of sweeping changes, the tourism sector is a central tenet of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “Vision 2030” and 2020 National Transformation Program, which constitute unprecedented plans to wean the country off its oil dependence, shrink the importance of the state and create millions of new private sector jobs to meet the demands of its young, expanding population.