The Jeddah Summer Festival has so far generated SR6 billion in revenue and has had 4.5 million visitors, far surpassing expectations, said Prince Abdullah Bin Saud, Chairman of the Festival Organizing Committee and Head of the Tourism Committee at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI). He added that the festival has created seasonal jobs for more than 500,000 young Saudi jobseekers. Prince Abdullah said the large number of visitors to the festival is proof of its success in realizing the goals of helping businesses in the Bride of the Red Sea and in securing seasonal job opportunities for young Saudis. “In fact the festival has succeeded in achieving these two goals in just a few weeks as a much larger than expected number of visitors have come from all the corners of the Kingdom and neighboring Gulf countries,” he said. He added that the success of the festival is due to a number of factors, primarily the variety of the entertainment programs on offer and the long period of the festival which this year includes summer vacation, Ramadan and the Eid holiday. Prince Abdullah said that in the first two weeks of the festival, amusement parks and tourist sites in the city received more than one million visitors and that most hotels and furnished flats were operating at full occupancy, adding that the largest number of visitors came from the Kingdom's Central, Eastern and Southern regions. He said that the Festival Organizing Committee through its inspection teams was closely monitoring the city's markets, recreational facilities, malls, restaurants and residential units in order to control prices and prevent the exploitation of visitors. Mazen Muhammad Baterji, JCCI Deputy Chairman, said that the festival is expected to achieve a 150 percent increase in revenue compared with last year. He added that Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, Emir of Makkah region, has requested visitors to Jeddah to bear with the inconveniences caused by projects currently being carried out in the city, assuring them that they will find Jeddah clean and quiet next year when these projects have been completed. __
