Fun-Seeking Saudis Boost Dubai’s Tourism Sector

Showing that being boring has a measurable economic cost for Saudi Arabia, an annual tourism-spending overview by payments network operator Visa Inc. has spending by Saudi tourists surging 29 percent in glitzy Dubai and other spots in the United Arab Emirates last year. Saudi tourists in the Emirates put $420 million on their Visa cards in 2012, jumping to third place in UAE spending, passing U.S. tourists in the Emirates and trailing only British and Russian tourists, according to the newly released study. Breaking down the spending further, Saudi tourists were the Emirates’ top spenders on both hotels and fast-food restaurants, according to the study, which tracks only expenditure on Visa cards. Saudis were the top foreign travelers by air to the Emirates in 2012, with 1,128,757 visiting, said Philip Wooller, regional director for STR Global, which tracks international hotel-room figures. Dubai – with its uber-luxe shopping malls and hotels featuring indoor ski lifts, scuba-diving with dolphins, moody cigar bars and helicopter taxis – is by far the biggest Saudi destination in the Emirates, Wooller noted. Saudi Arabia is home to the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, and modern Saudi Arabia was founded in alliance by the al-Saud family and the stringently conservative Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam. Alcohol is banned in the Saudi kingdom. Government-supported religious police patrol streets, malls, cafes and all other public areas, guarding against unrelated men and women mixing, women appearing with uncovered hair, men wearing shorts, or other perceived transgressions. Commercial movie theaters, night clubs, water parks or other sites where men and women might mingle – banned.

In June, as summer holidays loomed, a Saudi cleric caused a slight stir by tweeting that Dubai was off-limits to Saudi women, owing to its “immoralities".“The irony is that Saudi Arabia looks across Dubai in a fairly disapproving way. But they love it, there’s no doubt about it,” said Mr. Wooller. He recalled his surprise, on his first flight to Saudi Arabia, that airlines had to deploy their biggest planes to move the large numbers of Saudis wishing to make the short hop over to Dubai. “What Dubai offers, Saudi Arabia can’t get anywhere close to,” Mr. Wooller said. Saudi tourists in total spent $16 billion abroad in 2011, according to the annual report of the kingdom’s central bank, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. In a mid-August interview with the English-language Arab News newspaper, Saudi tourism industry executives faulted an under-developed tourism sector for not capturing more of Saudis’ money, and keeping it at home. “This big amount should have been spent inside the country, “ Abdul-Mohsen al-Hokair, of Abdul-Mohsen al-Hokair Group for tourism and development, was quoted as telling the daily. Of course, while Saudi Arabia loses on recreational tourism, it leads the world in pilgrimages, off-setting the loss of domestic holiday travelers. Islam requires every Muslim who is able to travel to Mecca at least once in his or her life to worship. The 10-day annual hajj, this year falling in October, is the world’s largest annual public gathering. Saudis and foreign travelers spent $21 billion in the kingdom in 2011, with 27 percent of Saudi travelers inside the kingdom, and 61 percent of foreign travelers, heading to Mecca and Medina for worship, according to the central bank figures. Saudi and international business people in the kingdom say the short list of things to do in the kingdom has commercial costs as well, less easily quantified. Oil makes Saudi Arabia the largest Arab economy by far, with $577 billion in gross domestic product in 2011-2012. But many of the international firms doing business in Saudi Arabia choose to base expatriate staff in Dubai, with their families, owing to the kingdom’s restrictive lifestyle, Saudi and foreign business people say. The kingdom is building what are meant to be self-contained economic cities in Riyadh and elsewhere to encourage more expatriate executives and their firms to base themselves here.