Saudi Arabia Puts Talent at Heart of Tourism Growth

As Saudi Arabia expands its tourism economy, attention is shifting from creating jobs to building long-term careers. Industry leaders are calling for stronger skills development, clearer progression pathways and leadership opportunities for Saudi talent.  

| Written by Palak Kataria

Image Courtesy:  Official Communication

What turns a rapidly growing industry into a place where people can build lasting careers? For Saudi Arabia’s tourism sector, the answer is increasingly moving beyond the number of jobs created to the quality of career pathways available to the people filling them.

The Kingdom already has just over one million employees working in tourism activities, according to the latest tourism-establishment data from Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), as cited by Ibrahim Osta, Senior Economic Growth Director and Global Tourism Lead at Chemonics International and Professor of Management at the George Washington University School of Business. Around one-quarter of those employees are Saudi nationals.

As Saudi Arabia works towards its ambition of attracting 150 million visitors and creating more than one million tourism jobs by 2030, the conversation is increasingly turning towards how Saudi professionals can enter the industry, develop specialist expertise and progress into leadership.

For Osta, simply expanding training opportunities will not be enough.

“Training centres alone do not create careers,” he said, arguing that occupational standards, employer demand, recognised qualifications, hiring pathways and opportunities for progression need to work together if talent development is to translate into sustainable careers.

That distinction could become particularly important as the tourism sector itself becomes more diverse.

A career in tourism is no longer limited to traditional hospitality or guest-facing positions. The next generation of destinations will require professionals across engineering, infrastructure, retail, culture, mobility and technology, alongside established hospitality expertise.

Salem Al Shahrani, Chief of Staff at Rua Al Haram Al Makki, King Salman Gate Project, describes the future tourism workforce as an interconnected ecosystem of professions rather than a single workforce.

King Salman Gate, for example, is expected to generate more than 300,000 jobs by 2036 across an integrated destination adjacent to AlMasjid AlHaram. Al Shahrani believes the opportunity lies in developing Saudi expertise across these different professions while creating clearer routes into specialist and leadership positions.

Tourism Careers Are Becoming More Digital

The skills required within those careers are also changing.

According to the release, future tourism professionals will increasingly need capabilities spanning AI and data analytics, digital marketing, revenue management, augmented and virtual reality, event operations, crowd management, sustainability, risk and safety, bilingual guest services and cross-cultural intelligence.

That creates an interesting shift for employees entering the sector. Tourism growth is opening opportunities not only for people trained specifically in hospitality, but also for professionals with technology, business, engineering, sustainability and creative expertise.

It also means learning is likely to remain important well beyond an employee’s first role. As technology changes destination management, operations and the visitor experience, career development will increasingly depend on opportunities to continually build new capabilities.

Danielle Curtis, Regional Portfolio Director - UAE at RX, believes the talent pipeline will need to develop alongside the physical expansion of Saudi Arabia’s tourism industry.

She noted that as new destinations, hospitality developments and visitor experiences come online, investing in people will be important to translating that expansion into lasting economic value. She also highlighted the breadth of opportunities emerging for young Saudi nationals as tourism careers extend beyond conventional hospitality positions.

These questions will be explored further during WTM Spotlight Riyadh, taking place from 8-10 September 2026 at the Riyadh Front Exhibition & Conference Center. A dedicated Talent & Leadership panel will bring together representatives from the Saudi Ministry of Tourism, King Salman Gate Project, Red Sea Global, King Saud University, Qiddiya and other organisations to discuss education, career pathways and leadership development.

But the larger workplace story extends beyond the event itself.

Saudi Arabia has already demonstrated how quickly a new industry can create employment at scale. The next measure of progress will increasingly be whether those jobs develop into careers where people can acquire expertise, move between disciplines and ultimately progress into leadership.

For employees entering tourism today, that could mean a much broader career landscape than the industry once offered. And for employers, educators and policymakers, the opportunity is to ensure that as the sector grows, the people working within it have the skills and pathways to grow with it.

Source(s): WTM Spotlight Riyadh press release, 26 August 2026; General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) data as cited by Ibrahim Osta.