Saudi tourism body seeks hotel room boost

Saudi Arabia’s tourism body wants to boost the number of hotel rooms in the Kingdom to 600,000 by 2020.
The Saudi Hotel Investment Conference discussed initiatives to grow the country’s leisure and hospitality sector and support tourism.
Hamad Al-Samail, deputy president for investment and tourism development at the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, reviewed the most significant advances in the sector.
“The Kingdom is home to more than 2,000 licensed and classified hotels and the number of housing units have gone up to more than 6,000 licensed and classified facilities, while the number of hotels rooms reached more than 500,000 by the end of 2018.”
He called on investors to look beyond Saudi Arabia’s major cities, and stressed the need to promote tourism and national heritage industries within the framework of the Vision 2030 reform plan.