Ryad (AFP)

Saudi Arabia will open a luxury resort in 2022, currently under construction in the Red Sea, said the project leader, but said training remains the major challenge for the nascent tourism sector in the Gulf.

The announcement was made on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative (FII), an international forum held in Riyadh to attract foreign investment and which is completing its work on Thursday.

"In 2022, we will welcome the first visitors," said John Pagano, CEO of Red Sea Development Company, a company owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF).

The station will be erected on islands off Jeddah and mountains close to the big city of western Saudi Arabia.

Unlike other destinations around the Red Sea, led by Egypt and Israel, Saudi Arabia is targeting luxury tourism, such as the Sultanate of Oman or the Emirate of Dubai.

"We will limit the number of visitors because mass tourism is a major cause of damage to the environment," Pagano told AFP.

Despite the lack of infrastructure and experience in this sector in Saudi Arabia, he believes that this "open market" may be of interest to private investors.

- "Open the country" -

"In Saudi Arabia, tourism accounts for 3.4% of GDP, so there is a huge growth opportunity for an industry that does not exist yet."

According to him, the project should create 70,000 jobs and add 22 billion riyals (5.2 billion euros) to Saudi GDP per year.

Public-private partnerships have been established and hundreds of contracts worth 2.5 billion riyals (600 million euros) already concluded, he added.

Staff training, more accustomed to hosting executives on a short business trip or Muslim pilgrims to Mecca, remains the main challenge, he says.

"We need a nationwide initiative to train professionals," says Pagano, noting that Saudi Arabia wants to welcome 100 million visitors by 2030, with one million people expected to work in the country. sector.

The CEO also calls for "opening the country", to improve its very negative image abroad and recognizes that there is "much to do" despite the "major transformations in progress".

The openness to tourism is one of the major axes of the reforms undertaken by the powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to get his country out of dependence on oil revenues.

While the ultra-conservative realm has eased some of the restrictions on women, it still faces serious human rights abuses by NGOs, such as the imprisonment of dissidents and the massive use of the death penalty.

© 2019 AFP