Selling a country
before it was built.
A global trade go-to-market programme for Saudi's Vision 2030 destinations: building demand, closing hotel partnerships and training the world's travel sellers, often well before the rooms had opened.
A tourism economy, being built almost from zero.
Saudi Arabia opened to leisure tourism for the first time in 2019 and, under Vision 2030, set itself one of the boldest targets in travel: to become one of the most-visited countries in the world, with a tourism sector built almost from a standing start.
The headline assets were extraordinary, Riyadh and Jeddah, the Red Sea coast, the Formula 1 Grand Prix on the Jeddah Corniche, and giga-projects like NEOM's The Line. Many of them were also, at the point of selling, still under construction. The challenge was to make the global trade excited about a destination it could not yet fully visit.
Build the demand ahead of the supply.
Generate global B2B buzz for the marquee destinations and events, secure and commercialise hotel partnerships on rates, allocation and pricing, and educate a worldwide network of travel sellers.
The goal was simple to state and hard to do: by the time the rooms opened, the agents should already know how to sell them, and want to.
A programme running on two clocks at once.
We ran a global trade go-to-market campaign end to end. Negotiated and closed agreements with hotels on pricing and rates, produced the sales assets and collateral the trade needed, and built an always-on education programme of webinars, training and workshops.
Underpinning all of it was a newsletter reaching more than 200,000 travel agents worldwide, keeping the destination in front of the people who actually sell it. The work served two timelines together: the Saudi that was bookable today, and the Saudi arriving by 2030.
From near-invisible to one of travel's most-talked-about stories.
A trade audience of more than 200,000 agents engaged and equipped to sell Saudi, and a base of hotel partnerships negotiated and in place ready for the supply coming online.
In the space of a few years, Saudi moved from barely registering on the global tourism map to one of the most-discussed destinations in the industry, well before all of its hotels had opened. The programme ran through 2026.
Entering a new
market?
A destination to launch, a trade to win over, a network of sellers to build before the supply arrives. If you would like to talk it through, we would like to listen.