Neom has said it wants five million visitors by 2030. For now, some projects are moving along, but it still has a lot of ground to make up.
Executives at Saudi Arabia’s giga-project, Neom, have revealed updated timelines for the multi-billion-dollar development. Some milestones are near-term and well-defined, such as Trojena, which is set to welcome guests in two years. Others, like The Line, are more open-ended.
Neom is the flagship project of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, an initiative aimed at transforming the country’s economy. It comprises several zones: Magna, Oxagon, Sindalah, Trojena, and The Line, with the potential for more to come.
Comparable in size to a large U.S. state or small European country, and with an estimated budget exceeding $500 billion, Neom has faced skepticism since its 2017 unveiling. Reports of delays—often citing unnamed sources—have circulated frequently.
Neom recently released a series of video updates featuring department heads at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos.
“In terms of the delivery of assets, we have some key assets coming down the road,” said Neom’s head of tourism, Niall Gibbons, in one of the videos. “Trojena will host the Asia Winter Games in 2029 and open for business in 2027. Magna will be ready in a few years’ time. The Line—a multi-generational project—will take a little longer.”
Though not mentioned by Gibbons, Sindalah opened last year.
Gibbons emphasized that the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia will be the primary sources of visitors in the initial phase, consistent with recent remarks from the country’s Minister of Tourism.
“In the initial phase of the opening, there is no doubt that a lot of our [Neom’s] visitors will be domestic ones,” Gibbons explained in the video. “Then the GCC will represent approximately 15% of our visitors. The main markets outside the GCC, from about five years onward, will be China, India, Europe, and North America, at about 10% each. Those are the markets [where] we’re going out to big travel shows. There has been a huge interest.”
Neom has said it wants five million tourists annually by 2030, according to a 2019 press release. Given Neom’s vast scale, this figure is relatively modest, comparable to annual visitor numbers in Athens or Venice. Despite this, Gibbons acknowledged the potential for overtourism concerns.
“We’re very familiar with the term overtourism now in the industry. For Neom, we’re keen to develop the concept of ‘under tourism,’” he said. “People want to go to places that are less developed, less well-traveled, and new on the world map. That’s what Neom brings from a tourism perspective in the years to come.”
cREDIT: skift.
