Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khateeb has said that Saudi Arabia will create as many as 250,000 jobs during its hosting of Expo 2030 in Riyadh, many of which will be sustainable positions of employment, including jobs connected to the 1,000 hotel rooms on the sidelines of the exhibition.
Al-Khateeb observed that the planet’s population will reach 8.5 billion by 2030, commenting: “There is a digitization process for many services, including the labor market, especially with regard to trade and manufacturing, which were digitized decades ago and had produced a negative impact on the labor market.”
The tourism sector represents 10% of the global labor market
He went on to explain that the tourism sector represents 10% of the global labor market, and there were 330 million jobs in 2019 in this sector before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. “We have returned to what was before the pandemic, according to the reports of the UN World Tourism Organization and the Travel and Tourism Council, and that is a good thing,” he said.
“In the tourism and travel sector, we must monitor the jobs that are lost from other sectors, and we have also to work to raise the global skills through the training courses that we provide to the staff,” he continued. “Therefore, we have to work to digitize nonessential jobs and services while maintaining some jobs that are important for the human element to occupy. This is because the stories that a tourist gets from the human element are what he will remember and share with members of his family.”
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