TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Saudi Arabia to launch tourist visas in early 2018
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Passengers board a new train service from the Saudi Railway Company at a station on the edge of the Saudi capital Riyadh on June 9, 2017. The service, which began early this year, links Riyadh with Majmaah and Qassim in the kingdom's heartland.
It is among railway expansion projects worth tens of billions of dollars in the kingdom as part of wideranging economic diversification efforts.
IA (Agence France -Presse/Ian Timberlake)
S
audi Arabia will begin issuing tourist visas in the first quarter of 2018, its top tourism official said, a first for the kingdom as it undergoes major economic and social reforms.
Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz told AFP that "all government approvals" are in place for the launch of electronic visas next year to "all nationals whose countries allow their citizens to visit" Saudi Arabia.
"We are now just preparing the regulations -- who is eligible for the visas and how to obtain them," added the head of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, who is a son of King Salman.
The move to open up its tourism sector is a major shift for Saudi Arabia as powerful Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Saudi Arabia launches massive tourism projectseeks to radically overhaul the kingdom's oil-dependent economy and shed its ultra-conservative image.
Apart from the millions of Muslims who travel to Saudi Arabia annually for the Hajj pilgrimage, most visitors face an arduous process and steep fees to enter the kingdom.
Read also: Saudi Arabia launches massive tourism project
Saudi Arabia currently grants tourist visas for a limited number of countries, but even those applications involve a range of restrictions, including requirements to travel through an accredited company and stay at designated hotels.
Prince Sultan said the cost of the new tourist visa had not yet been settled, but stressed that it would be "as low as possible, because we believe the cumulative economic impact is greater than the cash from the visa".
Saudi Arabia, though richly endowed with natural beauty, is notorious worldwide for its longstanding bans on the mixing of the sexes, alcohol consumption and women driving -- making it an undesirable destination for many.
In recent months, the kingdom has broken with some of its most rigid rules -- lifting a cinema ban, allowing genders to mix at a national celebration and announcing that women will be allowed to drive next June.
Prince Mohammed in August announced a massive tourism project to turn 50 islands and a string of sites on the Red Sea into luxury resorts.
