RIYADH: Hotel pipeline activity in the Middle East and Africa bucked a global trend by seeing an uptick at the end of 2022, according to data released by analytics company STR. The figures show that in December, 238,635 hotel rooms were under contract in the region, a 1.1 percent rise on same month in 2021. That increase was in contrast to other all other regions, with Europe posting a decline of 11.2 percent, Asia Pacific seeing a 5.4 percent drop and the Americas registering a 3.2 percent fall. Leading the way in hotel room construction in the Middle East and Africa was Saudi Arabia, accounting for 40,742. The UAE was second, with 27,456 rooms. The construction in Saudi Arabia is in keeping with the Kingdom’s goal to attract 100m visitors to its borders by the end of the decade as part of its Vision 2030 plan. Speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative forum in Riyadh last October, Gloria Guevara – the chief special advisor to the Minister of Tourism – said Saudi Arabia was making the most of its natural “assets”, such as the Red Sea, in a bid to boost the fledgling sector. Guevara, who served as the Secretary of Tourism in Mexico from 2010 and 2012, said her home country took 40 years to develop its tourism industry — but Saudi Arabia can do it in a quarter of that time. She said that more than 1 million jobs are going to be created in the sector by 2030, and added: “We are going to have 100 million visitors by then, and we"re hoping to have 10 percent of the GDP, which is very important because one in $10 are going to be the contribution for travel and tourism.” Her comments came fewer than six months after Turab Saleem, head of hospitality, tourism and leisure consultancy at Knight Frank in the Middle East and North Africa, told Arab News: “You can call the coming 10 years of Saudi Arabia the golden era of its hospitality. It will not happen again in the coming years and years to come. It will lay the foundation for hospitality in the long term.”