Tourism Development Across Saudi Arabia
25th July 2023
Acorn have just completed three exciting projects in Saudi Arabia that have been taking place over the last two years.
In the Farasan Islands we have been working with Beacon Development on the potential for future tourism growth, including the development of a Farasan Cultural Heritage Centre. Also with Beacon, we developed a Tourism Destination Sustainability Strategy to provide the minimum sustainability criteria for application to the entire tourism sector based on the Global Sustainably Tourism Council’s (GSTC’s) four criteria: sustainable management, socio-economic, cultural, and environmental impacts.
Finally, with Buro Happold we worked on the development, within NEOM, for the potential to offer low-impact tourism activities, including diving, non-motorised water sports, SAVE (Scientific, Academic, Volunteer and Educational) tourism, and community-based tourism. This work also included the identification of 10 tourism mega-trends related to domestic and international markets that are expected to impact on the development and growth of NEOM as a tourism destination.
