Saudi Arabia, Munira Al-Rubaian, replaces bed sheets and pillow covers during practical training for room service staff in hotels, hoping that this will qualify her for a permanent job in the emerging tourism sector, which the Kingdom seeks to enroll thousands of Saudis.
Al-Rubaian, 25, recently joined the government’s “Tourism Pioneers” program, which seeks to train 100,000 Saudis inside the Kingdom and at prominent European institutes in all fields of the sector.
“This opportunity came to me to learn and develop my abilities to get a job,” the veiled girl, who searched for months in vain for a job in the tourism sector, told AFP.
“I will have experience, culture and confidence in myself to deal with people,” she continues, carefully and eagerly listening to her coach’s instructions in a room that perfectly mimics a hotel room, before dusting off the bed frame and a set of drawers.
Al-Rubayan attends daily courses in a training center in eastern Riyadh teeming with young people who are trained in simulated places for reception areas, kitchens and rooms in hotels, as well as restaurant halls and fast food restaurants.
850,000 people work in the tourism sector in the Kingdom, and Saudis make up only 26% of them, according to official figures.
For decades, tourism in Saudi Arabia was limited to religious tourism related to Hajj and Umrah in Makkah and Madinah, and workers in the sector lacked experience in dealing with tourists looking for comfort and entertainment.
In 2019, Saudi Arabia, after decades of closure, opened its doors to tourists, introducing electronic visas upon arrival for citizens of 49 countries. It seeks to receive 30 million foreign tourists by 2030, compared to 4 million last year, as part of a plan of social and economic openness to diversify its oil-dependent economy.
The country is preparing its human cadres for this challenge.
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Tourism for Human Capacity Development, Muhammad Bushnaq, says that the “massive training program” aims to build “professional and highly effective” capabilities for Saudis in the “tourism sector in general and hospitality in particular.”
“We need to build the knowledge, skills and competencies of Saudis at the highest levels,” he continues.
The program, which was launched last June and has a budget of $100 million, has three levels, suitable for entry-level trainees, intermediate trainees and managers, and covers 52 positions.
The training inside the Kingdom includes 20 programs in six tracks ranging from various hotel support services, marketing and tourism guidance to the Department of Tourism and Hotels, as explained by the Director General of Emiratisation and Training at the Ministry of Tourism, Bandar Al-Safir.
The program aims to train 25 percent of its enrollees in tourism institutes in Spain, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
The training for a week in Switzerland allowed the young man, Al-Waleed Al-Zaidi, sales manager at a foreign hotel branch in Riyadh, to “deal with different types of tourists,” noting that most of the customers he used to serve in the Kingdom were employees and entrepreneurs.
The young man, who wore an elegant dark suit, said that the experience “opened my awareness of the different needs of tourists in terms of activities, foods and places they would like to visit,” instead of the requests of his current customers that are limited to asking about cleaning services and the cost of international calls.
Abdul Rahman Al-Ghunaim, 26, joined courses in accounting and event organization that will help him develop his career.
The young man, who has worked as a manager of the reception desk in a hotel in Riyadh for years, explains that he is “now able to organize a guided tour with a full schedule and reservations.”
And at the end of August, Saudi Arabia adopted a new tourism law that aims “to make the Kingdom a global tourist destination.”
The authorities also announced last week the expansion of the scope of electronic visas to include residents of the Gulf countries, in what experts considered an attempt to compete with its neighbor, the UAE, which accounts for the lion’s share of tourism in the region.