Arab News: Domestic tourism in Saudi Arabia is set for rapid growth in the future as the total income from domestic tourism by the year 2010 is expected to reach SR101.3 billion, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) announced yesterday.

Addressing the first workshop in the Saudi Travel & Tourism Investment Market yesterday, Ahmed Al-Khilaifi, deputy managing director, department of statistics, SAMA, said tourism in Saudi Arabia represented 3 percent of the government's GDP in 2006. He said SAMA prepared an annual report on the tourism industry in Saudi Arabia which gathers information on the number of trips, hotel occupancies and total income in the sector in the Kingdom. He also said statistics are compared with other Gulf countries.

According to the SAMA official, more than 342,000 employees work in the tourism sector in the Kingdom in areas related to hotels, resorts, furnished apartments, restaurants, coffee shops, amusement parks, and travel agencies. Employees working in the tourism sector are from both the public and private sectors with Saudis representing 15 percent of the total workforce in the industry.

As of 2005, the Kingdom's total revenue from tourism was SR57.8 billion. Of that figure SR35.5 billion was from domestic tourism and SR22.2 was from foreign tourism.

The three-day event, opened by Governor of Riyadh Prince Salman on Sunday, will discuss 29 studies related to travel and tourism in Saudi Arabia, and investment opportunities in the travel and tourism sectors.

In a session entitled (Tourism Investment: Reality & Opportunities), Abdulrahman Al-Sanei, deputy head of hotels & housing units, Riyadh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said that hotels in the capital had achieved a 280 percent boost in occupancy in the past three decades. Four-star hotels achieved the highest percent of increase in occupation (522 percent), followed by five star hotels (125 percent), and then three-star hotels (130 percent).

"The difference in percentage of occupancy is due to the rise in prices of hotels over the years. For example, prices of five-star hotels jumped 58 percent from 2005 to 2007," Al-Sanei said.

Al-Sanei stressed the importance of planning in which the government would determine the areas which most need hotels in large cities in the Kingdom. He also said it was important that the government increased the time given to investors to invest in plots for construction of hotels to 40 years, instead of 20. Furthermore, Al-Sanei called for the reduction of the Saudization quota in the hotel sector from its current quota of 32 percent.

"Over 90 percent of jobs in hotels are blue-collar jobs (waiters, chauffeurs, cleaning men, cooks) which require experience not found among Saudi nationals," he said, adding that the majority of these jobs were refused by Saudis.

In another session, Abdulrahman Al-Ansari, consultant, King Saud University (KSU), as well as Dr. Fahd Al-Hussein, College of Tourism, KSU, called on government officials to benefit from the rich heritage and cultural sites in Saudi Arabia as tourist attractions.

Dr. Al-Ansari pointed out that the Kingdom was full of many cultural sites which could be develped for tourism, giving the example of Madain Saleh.

He also said that several towers which were built in Hail such as the Barzan Towers which date to the late 17th century, as well as ancient castles built in the areas of Al-Jouf, Hail, Al-Kharj, and Wadi Aldawsir which are still intact, could be other precious areas for tourism investment. The professor said Saudi folklore handicraft was another area which could be invested in.