Saudi Arabia will provide 250,000 jobs as it hosts the 2030 World Expo in Riyadh, according to a government minister.

It comes as the Kingdom looks to create 1m new tourism jobs by 2030.

Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al Khateeb said the Kingdom will provide 250,000 jobs during its hosting of the Expo 2030 in Riyadh, stressing the importance of sustainable jobs that the Kingdom will provide, including 1,000 hotel rooms on the sidelines of the exhibition.

In a session entitled “Accelerated Progress in the Labour Market” at the Global Labor Market Conference, Al Khateeb referred to the inauguration of the National Tourism Strategy in 2019, which will take the domestic product in this sector from 3 per cent to 10 per cent in 2030, which requires providing one million additional jobs by 2030.

The minister referred to the Kingdom’s chairmanship of the Executive Council of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation and its hosting of the forthcoming General Assembly of the council under three priorities:

• The sustainability of the planet and the environment
• The assurance of suitable jobs for human beings, tourism growth, travel and double the number of services
• The importance of maintaining place in any tourist destination

He explained that the world’s population will reach 8.5bn by 2030, noting that there is a digitisation process for many services, including the labour market, especially in terms of trade and manufacturing that have been digitised since decades, which has had a negative impact on the labour market.

Al Khateeb added that the travel and tourism sector represented 10 per cent of the global labour market, and provided 330 million jobs in 2019 before the pandemic.

He also noted that airlines and hotels were the most affected sectors globally by losing 60m jobs.

Al Khateeb said: “We are back in the pre-pandemic according to figures by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, and the World Travel and Tourism Council, which is good.”

He noted that the tourism sector globally provides 10 per cent of jobs in the labour market, so it is an important sector for growth in the future, stressing the importance of maintaining the human component of the tourism sector as it plays an essential and central role in sharing the cultures from different countries that we travel to.