Who among us doesn't want to visit Saudi Arabia?

ah, but the malls! think of the shopping!

Well, except for everybody, of course, but the land of 9/11 is out to change that.

No booze, no swimsuits for women (no, that doesn’t mean they can lounge naked by the pool), and even that perennial crowd-pleaser, stadium gay-beheadings, is off limits to foreign visitors. What’s to like?

Saudi Arabia is betting $1 trillion it can become the next tourist hotspot

DIRIYAH, Saudi Arabia—Retired Arkansas accountant Dora Jane Flesher wanted a postpandemic adventure off the beaten track. In Saudi Arabia she was mesmerized by ancient tombs carved into sandstone outcroppings in Al-Ula. She was less impressed by a museum featuring a collection of old TVs and touch-tone phones plus rocks from every U.S. state.

“We got to see the country at the beginning of its opening up,” said Ms. Flesher, 65. “But that meant we saw a lot of random things that will not be popular tourist destinations.”

Welcome to one of the world’s newest tourist frontiers.

…… To meet its tourist targets, Saudi Arabia needs to appeal to the mass market, not just travel junkies and well-heeled retirees.

One of those helping the crown prince in that direction is Jerry Inzerillo, a renowned hospitality and tourism executive from Brooklyn who has launched hotels and resorts from the Bahamas to South Africa.

He was hired in 2018 to run Diriyah, a $40 billion development project that has echoes of Colonial Williamsburg plus luxury hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants. Based around a mud-brick settlement near Riyadh where the ruling family took power in the 1700s, it aims to cement the origin story of Saudi Arabia, for both domestic consumption and international appeal.

“In a world of wonders, there’s only one Diriyah” is Mr. Inzerillo’s catchphrase to market the attraction, which has little name recognition outside of Saudi Arabia.

I’ll go out on a limb here, and suggest that a fledgling tourism industry with its chief attraction a mud-walled city whose name rhymes with diarrhea is going to be a tough sell.