Saudi tourism has exceeded its original 100-million-visitor target, and whether smart hospitality works at giga-project scale is now an execution problem that is redrawing the technology-provider role
Saudi Arabia no longer must prove it can attract tourists. According to the Ministry of Tourism’s 2025 annual statistical report, as published by the Saudi Press Agency, the Kingdom recorded around 122 million domestic and inbound tourists and approximately SAR 300 billion in total tourism spending in 2025. The Kingdom has set a target of 150 million domestic and inbound tourists by 2030. The ambition is proven. What follows is a question of delivery
Hotel supply is following. Arab News reported more than 300,000 hotel rooms in the Kingdom’s development pipeline. Separately, HospitalityNet described a broader Saudi real-estate and infrastructure pipeline of approximately USD 1 trillion that included around 315,000 hotel rooms. The figures describe different measures, but they make the scale clear: the technology behind that pipeline must work from the first day of operation and keep working after guests arrive.
Modern hospitality runs on software as much as service. A guest’s arrival may involve digital identity checks, a mobile key, a property system that recognises preferences and building controls that manage energy room by room. Behind the front desk sit reservation platforms, payment rails, loyalty data, access controls, surveillance and guest connectivity. Each depends on networks, computing, applications and cybersecurity working as one system. When any layer fails, the guest sees it at once.
Every one of those systems holds something an attacker may want: identity information, passport details, payment credentials or location data. That makes hospitality a standing cyber target, where a serious breach can disrupt operations and damage a flagship property’s reputation. According to Arab News, citing the ITU Global Cybersecurity Index, Saudi Arabia holds a Tier 1 role-modelling classification. The task now is to carry that national standard into every resort, airport lounge and booking system a visitor touches.
In Saudi Arabia the strategy is clear and capital is being deployed. The harder discipline, everywhere, is delivery. According to BCG Platinion, only 30 per cent. of large-scale technology programmes fully meet their timeline, budget and scope. Even the best technology can fall short if suppliers, systems and operating teams are not coordinated. At giga-project scale, integration is not a technical footnote; it is the operating model.
The telecommunications and IT-services industry is a natural participant in closing that gap. According to GSMA Intelligence, as reported by The Fast Mode, Saudi Arabia recorded average 5G download speeds of approximately 314 Mbps in 2025. That figure is a national measure produced by a third party and reflects the coordination strength of the Kingdom’s connectivity environment. It is not a measure of Salam’s individual performance or of conditions at any particular site or property. The integration challenge is broader than any single network. A programme can specify the best available technology and still fall short if no single party owns the task of making many vendors and systems work as one. That pattern repeats across every market that attempts it, and the difficulty is rarely a matter of ambition or of the quality of individual components. Value now sits not only in bandwidth but in how connectivity, hosted or cloud environments, cybersecurity, managed services and specialist applications are brought together.
The telecom industry is the natural place to close this gap, and its role is changing to do it. For two decades operators sold bandwidth and coverage. That business is now a commodity. Connectivity of that quality is now assumed. The value has moved up the stack, to the systems that sit on the network: cybersecurity that protects payment and identity data, and managed services that run all of it so a hotel operator does not have to. Capabilities including private 5G tuned to individual properties and AI that turns guest and operational data into decisions are being developed and scaled progressively.
An operator that already owns the network is positioned to own the integration above it. It has the field engineering, the round-the-clock operations centres, and the local presence that a hospitality group will not build for a single property. The shift under way across the industry is from selling components to delivering outcomes: a commitment that the technology behind a resort will work, measured against service levels, with one partner accountable rather than a dozen. That is a different business from telecommunications, and it demands different skills, in software and in programme delivery.
For Salam, the current foundation is its existing connectivity, data-centre and hosted, managed, cybersecurity and professional services. Under Salam B2B 2.0, broader private 5G, edge and data and AI capabilities are being progressively developed or scaled, including through technology partners where relevant. The commercial opportunity is to connect those capabilities within a model that is accurate about what Salam provides and what its partners provide.
Vision 2030 first gave tourism a numerical test. The Kingdom has passed the original visitor target and now aims for 150 million domestic and inbound tourists by 2030. The next test is qualitative: whether the experience holds together, from the application that books a room to the network that runs it. Meeting that standard at giga-project scale is an execution question before it is a technology question. Providers that understand this will take greater delivery responsibility within the scope of what they can genuinely support. write by By Abdullah Al Khorami, Chief Business Officer, Etihad Salam Telecom Company
