In August, the Silver Spirit cruise liner began offering tours along the unspoiled coast.
Saudi Arabia:
Passing past pristine islands and turquoise lagoons, the first cruise ship offering Saudi tours has a dual purpose: to revive tourism despite coronavirus fears and to present austerity-defying megaprojects planned along the Red Sea.
In August, the Silver Spirit cruise liner began offering tours along the unspoiled coast that the petro-state aspires to turn into a global tourism and investment hotspot as part of a plan to reduce the dependence on oil revenues.
Chartered by a company owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the luxury ship offers a window into multibillion-dollar “gigantic projects” that the kingdom is pursuing despite a severe economic recession.
“We are bringing the Red Sea to the world,” Tourism Minister Ahmed al-Khatib told AFP in an interview on board the ship.
“We are unleashing the value of the Red Sea.”
On a four-day cruise, the ship sailed past key development sites, including the Red Sea Project – designed to be a Maldives-style resort destination encompassing dozens of scenic islands – and Amaala, a luxury tourism project.
For a few hours, it also anchored off two islands, including Sindala, which forms a slice of NEOM, a planned $ 500 billion megalopolis that is roughly the size of Belgium.
Otherwise off-limits to the public, cruise passengers toured the tiny coral reef-fringed island in golf carts and dined at a pop-up Michelin-starred restaurant perched along the shore.
Social media influencers invited to the trip posed for photoshoots in shallow turquoise waters and white sand beaches.
“Unlimited assistance”
Skeptics are questioning the viability of giant projects amid a sharp drop in government revenues due to a virus-induced economic contraction and a sharp drop in oil prices.
The world‘s largest crude exporter has announced plans to cut government spending by more than seven percent next year, with the budget deficit expected to widen to 12 percent of gross domestic product in 2020.
But simultaneously, the government is awarding multibillion-dollar contracts for what would be the largest construction projects in the world.
The Saudi PIF – the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund – has awarded a series of contracts to develop NEOM, most recently US project management firm Bechtel and infrastructure consulting firm Aecom.
According to the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), the Red Sea project has so far awarded deals worth five billion riyals ($ 1.33 billion) and is expected to award more than 3.5 billion of riyals by the end of the year.
“New projects on the Red Sea coast are moving forward despite Covid-19 and low oil prices,” Colin Foreman, editor-in-chief of MEED, told AFP.
“Over the next three years, the Saudi government will be smaller but its plans will be bigger.”
Khatib, who sits on the boards of several megaprojects, including NEOM, said developments were progressing “very quickly” with “unlimited support” from Saudi Arabia’s top leaders.
Uplifting tale
The kingdom first introduced premium cruising as the pandemic put an end to global tourism.
Saudi Arabia launched tourist visas last year, opening up one of the last frontiers of global tourism as a cornerstone of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s desire to diversify the economy de facto.
With the cheapest tickets priced at around 6,000 riyals ($ 1,600), the cruise aims to attract domestic tourists with deep pockets amid the wider disruption of international travel.
Along with spacious suites and private butlers, the trip offered sartorial freedoms rare on dry land. Cape-like abaya dresses were almost entirely absent for Saudi women.
However, to preserve the privacy of passengers in beachwear, cell phones had to be placed in sealed pouches during stopovers on the island.
And in a country that bans alcohol, the ship’s bars only offer non-alcoholic Merlot, Chardonnay and lager beer.
The Silver Spirit started out from King Abdullah Economic City, a multi-billion dollar project near the western city of Jeddah that serves as an edifying tale for the giga projects it presents.
The gigantic development, launched over a decade ago as part of a diversification plan to build new cities, appears largely empty and underlines the kingdom’s long-standing struggle to attract investment in areas other than fuel. fossils.
“The political commitment to move Giga projects forward seems to be there,” said Karen Young, researcher at the American Enterprise Institute.
“But spending limited state resources on projects not focused on job creation or removing as many people as possible from the public sector workforce is not a positive step towards economic diversification.”
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
