The Rig will be a 150,000 square meter theme park and resort, birthed from a previously established oil rig. The Rig will be situated on the Arabian Gulf.
The country might be striving to recede its co-dependency on oil, but that hasn’t refrained the Arabic kingdom from utilizing its petroleum industry as encouragement for a new-fangled tourist magnetism.
Financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), The Rig will encompass 11 restaurants and 3 hotels across a plethora of interlinked platforms along with adrenaline-rush activities like skydiving and bungee jumping, as well as roller coaster rides.
Saudi’s The Rig
Blueprints of The Rig targets to create a multitude of hospitality contributions, adventures, and aquatic sports activities. The blueprints were released along with a promotional video, released in early October.
The oil rig will be transformed into a humongous 1.6 million square feet resort that will be situated on the Arabian Gulf. The theme park is a part of Saudi Arabia’s 2030 strategy to release itself as a principal tourism destination.
Through financing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), The Rig will be delivering 3 hotels with 800 rooms, inclusive of one ultra-luxury option alongside 11 restaurants, all interlinked by platform bridges. The resort will also encompass roller coaster rides, submarine adventures, waterslides, and more adventure sports like bungee jumping and diving. For elite class voyagers, helicopters and a superyacht marina will be established with 50 berths to bring tourists to The Rig.
A statement from the PIF indicated that the project was an exceptional tourism attraction, predicted to attract tourists from around the globe. It indicated that The Rig would be especially popular with visitors from the Arabian Gulf region.
The Rig is described as the world’s foremost tourism destination inspired by oil rigs. The imminent lure is being constructed in line with Saudi’s Vision 2030 strategy, which targets to restructure Saudi Arabia as a top international tourism terminus and expand its economy.
Whilst millions of pilgrims travel to the Saudi holy city of Mecca annually, the nation’s stringent laws restricting women’s freedom and its troubling human rights history have made Saudi a less than a promising destination for tourists.
The Rig to restore Saudi’s tourism sector
Saudi has constantly strived to establish itself as a hotspot for global tourists. It has always struck a competition with its neighbors Oman, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. The country aims to entice 100 million tourists annually by the end of the current decade.
With contending destinations like Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, the Saudi developers expect to attract more attention from tourists in neighboring countries, to gain more than 1 million visitors annually. Riyadh also declared that the nation was building a new-fangled city with one of the world’s fastest roller coasters in the next two years.
In early 2021, strategies for a second national air carrier- Saudia, formerly known as Saudi Arabian Airlines, were confirmed by Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Crown Prince also declared to invest USD 147 billion into logistics and transport over 9 years.