Up to 15 hotels a year will start operating between 2023 and 2025 with capacity to rise to accommodate 5 million visitors by 2030.

Saudi Arabia's $500 billion mega-city NEOM is planning to open the first of its hotels by the end of 2022 as it targets hosting about one million visitors by 2025 and 5m by 2030, its tourism chief said.

The futuristic city will open up to 15 hotels a year in the period between 2023 and 2025, before ramping up the pace to 20 to 30 hotels annually thereafter, Andrew McEvoy, sector head of tourism at NEOM, told The National during the Arabian Travel Market on Tuesday.

As economies worldwide slowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns, many governments have turned to infrastructure investments to stimulate sustainable and climate-friendly economic recovery.  Last year, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region accounted for 134 projects with a total value of $51.3 billion. The tally for the first quarter of 2021 stands at 61 projects with a total value of $49 billion with oil and gas, and power in the top-performing sectors.

NEOM has entered the frame to become the next location to host Formula E races in Saudi Arabia, with talks having taken place between city and championship officials.  The planned smart city of NEOM, situated by the Red Sea, is known to be very interested in hosting future Formula E races in its bid to become a “centre for sporting excellence”.   This comes as part of the Saudi Vision 2030 programme, which has been devised to reduce the state’s reliance on oil for economic growth following the 2014-15 price collapse.?

After three editions of the Diriyah E-Prix to date, Formula E has eight years remaining on its 10-year deal with the Saudi General Sports Authority to host races in the country, but no one location has exclusivity.   NEOM has already hosted a leg of the 2021 Dakar Rally and Extreme E could move there also following a maiden Desert X-Prix event in the Alula region across 3-4 April this year.

In January of this year (2021), NEOM (a portmanteau of the Greek word for ‘new’ and the Arabic word for ‘future’), announced its plans for THE LINE; a linear, car-free city built from scratch, housing one million citizens and running 170km in length. It’s all very Jetsons, all very inspiring, and all-too easy to see the attraction of packing your bags and moving to what promises to be a utopia in the desert.

“NEOM is all about things that are necessarily future-oriented and visionary,” its Chief Executive Nadhmi al Nasr said. Taleedah, to that end, was a pioneer; the first Saudi model to walk at the Paris Haute Couture shows in July 2018, and the epitome of a modern Saudi woman – well-travelled, well-educated, ambitious, and showing the world exactly how its done.

Saudi Arabia's future NEOM city will require a "multiple" of the 4 GW of renewable energy planned in the $5 billion joint venture with Air Products as hydrogen will provide the basis for clean feedstock used in the production of fertilizers, chemicals and oil derivatives, according to Peter Terium, the former CEO of Germany's RWE who is now NEOM's head of energy.

Export potential for the 1.2 million mt of ammonia to be produced from hydrogen in the Air Products-ACWA Power-NEOM joint venture runs from Japan to Korea, Florida and California, along with parts of Europe, Terium told S&P Global Platts. Saudi Arabia's industrial giants from Aramco to SABIC and Maaden could get involved in using hydrogen from NEOM to produce clean fuels, fertilizers and petrochemicals, he said.

Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology in Saudi Arabia discusses NEOM and Vision 2030. He speaks with Manus Cranny on "Bloomberg Daybreak: Middle East."

In line with the Vision 2030 goals of revolutionizing environmental sustainability, Desert Technologies (DT), a Saudi solar energy firm, launched for the first time its Sahara containerized solar generator (CSG), in collaboration with Green Corp Konnection (GCK), to power part of the bivouac in NEOM during this year’s Dakar Rally.

The unit used one small container (20 feet) and two standard containers (40 feet) to generate 62 kW of energy to partially power the assembly area for rally drivers.

A joint venture comprising Air Products, ACWA Power and NEOM has hired financial firm Lazard to advise it on a planned $5 billion hydrogen project in the NEOM high-tech business zone in Saudi Arabia, sources said.  The project, which will be equally owned by the three partners, will produce green ammonia for export to global markets, the companies said in July last year.

The $5 billion project in NEOM will consist of a 1.2 million tonnes a year green ammonia plant, which will use hydrogen produced from an electrolyser powered by more than 4 GW of solar, wind and storage. Production is due to begin in 2025.