Over 10,000 people visited the three-day second Jeddah Tourism and Travel Exhibition (JTTX 2nd), which closed here Friday. The exhibition mainly focussed on the importance of investment in tourism, especially local tourism sites in Abha, Hail, Taif, Tabuk, Al-Baha and Jeddah in addition to sites having religious potential represented by the two holy cities of Makkah and Madina. Muhammad Al-Omari, Executive Director of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA), said that the series of forums and events organized in Jeddah every year shows the importance of the city as a center of tourist attractions. The city, he said, has around 350 commercial and shopping centers representing more than 25 percent of such centers in the Kingdom. “Moreover, Jeddah receives around 36 percent of tourist flights and the city is the gateway to the Kingdom for around 12 million Umrah visitors and Haj pilgrims around the year. Tourists spent around SR59 billion in 2010. Out of this, SR35 billion — a whopping 56 percent — was spent on local tourism, he said. In 2011, tourism spending increased to SR82 billion with expenditure on domestic tourism reaching SR46 billion. It is believed, he said, that spending on tourism will increase by 12.5 percent annually during the next three years. Al-Omari added that there has been a huge increase in jobs in the tourism sector, which provided 738,000 direct and indirect jobs by the end of 2010. Jobs in the sector will increase at the rate of six percent per year to reach 926,000 by 2015, the official said. The SCTA pavilion laid special emphasis on Hail as an important tourist destination. The city is located about 600 km north of Riyadh. It is rich in archeological sites dating back to prehistoric times, and it was an important trading and commercial center in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic era. The famous Darb Zubaidah route for pilgrimage passed though Hail. The most famous archeological sites are Al-Qishla located in the center of the city, and Ratt and Al-Manjour sites located 320 km to the southwest. __
