Saeed Al Khotani Saudi Gazette RIYADH – Alitalia, the Italian national carrier, will resume flights to Saudi Arabia from September this year after a decade of absence, Italian Ambassador to the Kingdom, Valentino Simonetti, said. "The carrier is expected to operate three flights a week to King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, thus making the total roundtrip flights from Riyadh to Rome five, as Saudia current operates two flights a week. The return comes in response to the rising number of Saudi visitors to Italy," he told the Saudi Gazette. Simonetti said "it is difficult here in Riyadh to tell the number of Saudis visiting Italy annually, because part of them do so while they are in Europe on Schengen visa obtained from different European embassies here, " he said "But I can tell that last year, 2011, we issued over 30,000 visas, with an increase of 30 percent over the previous year. The majority of the Saudi visitors are tourists, but we are seeing more businessmen too. Also, we are seeing more women mostly with their families to follow the latest trend in fashion industry at the capital of Italian fashion industry, Milan," he added. Simonetti is keen to see more Saudi tourists in his country, saying that "in line with this interest, we worked to facilitate granting the visa and we succeeded in decreasing the days of issuing it for Saudis to less than five days," he said. Moreover, Italy is a well-known global tourism destination with its modern vibrant cities like Rome, its most beautiful and romantic cities like Venice which is built on water in a lagoon, and its leading fashion center of Milan. "We suppose this is well known to Saudis, nonetheless we are thinking of carrying out a tourism promotion campaign once Alitalia is here to introduce new locations to them like south Italy towns, Tuscany, and Islands of Sardinia and Sicily," he said. The Italian Ambassador wanted to also see students go to his country. "Currently we have around 50 Saudi students studying medicine at the distinguished University of Pavia. And for more students, we will work to benefit from the ambitious massive scholarship program of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah, though we are a latecomer to this program," he said. "We couldn't attract more students before because there was no English programs in Italian universities, but now with the existence of such programs, our hope is higher to attract more students. Three Italian universities participated at this year Saudi international fair in Riyadh and displayed their offerings. They were University of Rome, University of Vita-Salute San Rafaele, and University of Pavia," he added. Simonetti said the bilateral trade relation between his country and Kingdom is remarkably getting stronger. "Last year, we reached to a new high of €11 billion, a big jump of 40 percent over the year before," he noted. "This was due to our increase in oil import and the rise in its price, in addition to an expansion in exporting machinery to Kingdom. You know that Italy is very famous in manufacturing all types of machines ranging from agriculture to hospitals," he pointed out. The relation between Italy and Saudi Arabia goes back to almost 80 years, and "precisely, to the Kingdom unification year of 1932. We will celebrate this occasion in Rome, either in September or October, by organizing a special week to shed light on different aspects of this distinguished relation," Simonetti added.
