Stimulating Tourism Growth in Saudi Arabia Through Heritage: A Case Study of Al-Turaif District World Heritage Site

Abstract

The old city of Ad-Dir'iyah was the second site to be inscribed on the World Heritage List in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in 2010, comparatively later than many sites in the rest of the world and indeed after many other nations in the Arab world. At this time, practice and policy in the World Heritage context was still at an emergent stage in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. However, there has been increasing interest in tourist development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including political attempts to make tourism a primary component of the economy in line with the launch of the Vision 2030 project in 2016. The site of Ad-Diriyah, principally the Turaif District, has been proposed as an exemplar site for the region’s urbanization, and several developments and global partnerships have been undertaken targeting improvements to make the site a first-rate tourist attraction experience. The author would like to make a formal assessment of the suitability of this particular site for sustainable tourism and infrastructural development as part of the wider economic development of the KSA. To this end, I will be examining the extent to which UNESCO World Heritage status contributes to this in parallel (and potentially in collaboration) with the emerging heritage policies of the KSA.