The oil-rich kingdom ‘has it all’, senior advisor to the Saudi government Gloria Guevara tells Ian Taylor
Saudi Arabia aims to become one of the world’s leading destinations by 2030 despite only starting to issue tourist visas months before the pandemic.
But Gloria Guevara, former head of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), is confident it can be done and believes it will benefit the industry beyond Saudi Arabia.
Now senior advisor to the tourism ministry of Saudi Arabia, Guevara is under no illusions about the size of the task, with the government aiming to attract 100 million travellers a year by the end of the decade.
She told Travel Weekly: “For a country to develop travel and tourism it needs vision, leadership and resources. It’s hard to find a country with two of these. Saudi Arabia has all three, and I don’t see another country that has it all.”
Guevara added: “It has a prime minister [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud] who, every time he meets a foreign head of state, talks about tourism. That is a message for all governments. It not only helps Saudi Arabia. It helps the whole industry.”
The $6 trillion in funds available match the scale of the ambition, but Guevara acknowledges the country faces challenges in fulfilling its rapid growth plans, not least in training the required workforce.
She noted: “We need 600,000 rooms. Most staff in Saudi hospitality are expatriates. So, how do we accelerate training as we create one million jobs?
“We’re building a Global Academy to train Saudis and foreigners and sending 100,000 Saudis abroad to attend hospitality schools, sponsored by the ministry of culture.
“We’re also partnering with the private sector to create curricula for training, partnering with local schools and investing in other areas.”
The prohibition on alcohol in Saudi Arabia may prove a barrier to substantial growth in leisure tourism beyond the Muslim world. But Guevara argued: “A lack of alcohol is not an impediment to travel.
“There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. At some point, they all want to visit Mecca. A lot of families also don’t need to drink.
“The number of inbound visitors in the first quarter of this year was already 7.8 million, following 17.5 million in 2022. Lack of alcohol has not been an impediment, and Saudi domestic tourism is booming.”
Centre for Sustainable Tourism
Saudi Arabia may be the world’s biggest oil producer, but it also aims to lead in investment in sustainable tourism.
Former WTTC president and chief executive Gloria Guevara, now senior advisor to the Saudi Arabian tourism ministry, is working to establish a Sustainable Tourism Global Centre in Riyadh, due to open this year.
She said: “We’ve created an institution with multiple stakeholders to understand the sector’s footprint, to show what others are doing and to help SMEs.
“The travel and tourism sector is fragmented – 80% of the sector are SMEs and if you’re a small business, it’s difficult to move to net zero. If you ask a restaurant, ‘What is your carbon footprint’, they don’t know. They hardly survived Covid.
“We’re working with Stanford and Harvard Universities, working with the US government, talking to the UK government. We’ve invited France, Spain, Japan. We’re engaged with 400 experts.
“The centre is not for Saudis but to provide actionable solutions for SMES. Saudi Arabia decided to sponsor it.”
The country also sponsored the first detailed calculation of travel and tourism’s carbon footprint, published last November, which put the sector’s global greenhouse emissions at 8.1% of the world total in 2019.
Guevara explained: “There had been no clear measurement of the emissions contribution of the sector.” The WTTC announced the results, but Guevara noted: “We sponsored the study and co-own it.”
She insisted: “Saudi Arabia is transforming itself. It’s an oil country, but it’s investing in transition.”
Gender equality – ‘it’s not just talk’
As a woman leading major travel and tourism initiatives in Saudi Arabia, former WTTC chief Gloria Guevara is aware of concerns about the rights of women in the country despite significant reforms since 2017.
Guevara said: “The country has gone from not allowing women to drive or to travel alone to not just allowing this but having laws on equal work and equal pay and quotas for hiring women.”
She noted “40%-plus of the workforce are women now” and said: “I live in Saudi Arabia and see it. The government is investing a lot in education and in women getting opportunities. It’s not just talk, there is action.”
Guevara was minister of tourism in Mexico before leading the WTTC in London and she said: “My daughter, who is 18, used to live in the UK. She took six months to adjust to living in the UK.
“When we moved to Saudi Arabia – where she is in an American school – she said: ‘Why do you only allow me to live in Riyadh one year?’”