Tabuk Province
Tabuk's NEOM ($500B) and Red Sea Project transform Saudi Arabia's northwest into tourism showcase, with 1M visitors expected by 2025 and 5M by 2030.
Tabuk Province hosts Saudi Arabia's most ambitious Vision 2030 megaprojects—NEOM ($500 billion, 33 times New York City's size), the Red Sea Project (50 hotels across 22 islands), and AMAALA's luxury resorts. The northwestern province transforms from agricultural periphery into tourism and technology showcase, the developments expecting 1 million visitors by 2025 and 5 million by 2030.
The Red Sea Project opened its first resort in 2023, with 16 resorts launching across 2024-2025 including the Nujuma Ritz-Carlton Reserve ($3,431/night) and Time Magazine's 'World's Greatest Places' featured Shebara Resort. NEOM's cognitive cities, entertainment venues, and research centers represent the scale of ambition that only sovereign wealth can finance.
The province's transformation demonstrates Vision 2030's capacity to create entirely new economic geographies, the investment relocating development to territory that lacked the infrastructure, population, and water resources that conventionally attract investment. Whether these megaprojects achieve sustainable operation—or whether they require perpetual subsidy—tests whether sovereign wealth can manufacture tourism destinations from undeveloped coast.