Saudi Arabia on Monday announced plans for a new airport in Riyadh capable of eventually receiving 180 million passengers a year, as part of the kingdom’s efforts to diversify its economy away from petrodollars.  The airport will be named after 86-year-old King Salman and was announced by his son, 37-year-old de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).  The project is designed to cover 57 square kilometres, with the aim of accommodating up to 120 million travellers by 2030 and 185 million by 2050. The airport will be owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, chaired by the crown prince.

Saudi Arabia will not directly build the futuristic city THE LINE at NEOM, but instead use “a lot of artificial intelligence to design through a digital twin backbone,” NEOM’s executive director Giles Pendleton said in an internal interview.

The hanging stadiums within Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion giga-project NEOM will make tourists reimagine and visualize the future, as the Kingdom steadily pursues its ambitions to become a global tourism hub by 2030, according to its CEO Nadhmi Al-Nasr.  Speaking at the World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit in Riyadh on Nov. 30, Al-Nasr noted that everything in NEOM will be connected to tourism business models.

Australia-based global engineering services giant Worley announced that it has been signed Framework Bridging Agreement for services in the Saudi giga project NEOM.  The agreement was inked with ENOWA, the energy and water subsidiary of NEOM, Worley said in a stock exchange statement. The statement said ENOWA is planning to create a sustainable supply and distribution of water and energy throughout the NEOM region.

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Global (RSG), the developer behind The Red Sea and Amaala giga projects, has purchased a fleet of electric buses to deliver its sustainable, smart and seamlessly integrated transport network across The Red Sea project, the developer said in a statement.  The purchase agreement was signed with e-mobility firm Electromin and Energy International Corporation to deploy a fleet of zero-emission electric buses for employee transportation.

Allen & Overy has advised NEOM, the smart and sustainable regional development project in northwest Saudi Arabia, in connection with a USD 175 million Series E investment in Volocopter.  NEOM will take a significant equity stake in the company as part of its strategic engagement with the global eVTOL industry, positioning it as a leader in future mobility solutions.

Many large Korean construction companies are moving to get a piece of the action as Saudi Arabia wants to partner with Korean builders in promoting the NEOM City project. Yet, DL E&C, the No. 3 player in the Korean construction market, appears to have failed to jump on the bandwagon. DL E&C reduced the proportion of the overseas business and focused instead on the housing business at home, which probably served as a negative factor for the builder, analysts say.

The unofficial "richest man in the world" and the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia's choice of lodging during his stay in South Korea is garnering attention with his extravagant decision to stay in a suite room that goes for 22 million won ($16,449) a night.  According to industry insiders, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived at Seoul Air Base around midnight and spent the night at the Lotte Hotel Seoul, a luxury business hotel situated in central Seoul.