Middle East region will become the tourism powerhouse by 2030 as the region will have almost half a million keys by 2030, shared Turab Saleem Partner – Head of Hospitality, Tourism & Leisure Advisory – MENA Knight Frank At an exclusive interview with TravelTV Middle East at the Future Hospitality Summit in Saudi Arabia. “It started off with Dubai leading followed by Qatar, Abu Dhabi and now Saudi Arabia in terms of hotel rooms. Travellers will have more options to select from the whole of Arabia with the GCC countries which will have a total of one million keys by 2030, making it a tourism hub.” Currently there are 320,000 keys in the pipeline in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and if you take the whole region the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait will also have additional keys which will make the Middle East region as the powerhouse of tourism. With the ease of visa to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it has become a hub for international travel. The government has invested in infrastructure as well as talent, as they have partnered with various international universities to provide the education necessary to develop the talent of the industry. Saleem further pointed out that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s main goal was to diversify the non-oil sector by 2030 to add 10% to the GDP, and they are in the right direction going towards the goal as already 4% has been added to GDP by the end of last year.
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