You may have read a recent news story about Saudi Arabia injecting $300 million into the cruise industry. Although that sounds like a lot, just for context, we need to add that to the?$49 billion already budgeted.

Neighboring Qatar spent?an incredible $220 billion?towards its tourism planning funding for the World Cup, and more will be spent over the next five years to support tourism and leverage its new infrastructure. In comparison, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) only spends a measly $35 billion on tourism. You may not think of these nations as traditional "disruptors," but they continue to disrupt, not with new thinking, but through massive cash investments.

Many within our travel, tourism, attractions, and hospitality space are quick to talk, debate, and forecast how technology changes, such as AI, will impact our industry. At times, it can almost become an obsession, and many of us have reached fatigue at this point with some of these conversations.

However, it's interesting that when new players enter the space and inject vast amounts of cash, we don't have the same type of conversations, there doesn't seem to be the same level of interest, and we don't spend nearly enough time, thinking about how these developments might impact our business over the next five to 10 years.

Just as it would be foolish not to think about the impact of technologies, whether that be new ticketing systems, dynamic pricing, or the result of artificial intelligence, I believe it's also very foolish not to talk about massive disruptions and where money is being spent, and what that does for all of us globally.

As Brian Halligan, the founder of Hubspot, once stated, the world is now flat; he meant that none of us compete in isolated local markets anymore. Everything we do involves competing on a global scale. When people search for beaches, for example, in the US, they are no longer just provided information on beaches in the United States, such as those in Florida or California. Instead, they're offered up the Gold Coast of Australia, Bora-Bora, The East Coast of Malaysia, and countless European possibilities. Yes, the availability of travel, such as improved flight options, has helped.

AI-powered chat technology. (Photo Credit: Guillaume / iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Also, improved access to information via the Internet is a big part of that change. But another significant shift made those changes possible:?huge cash investments made these destinations more attractive.?They became players very quickly, and thanks to the new technologies and methods of delivery, they started to compete aggressively with more established destinations. It all began with huge investments being pumped into these destinations.

Since information-sharing is even faster today, and access to these destinations through improved distribution channels is better, we must attempt to understand what impact these new, massive cash investments will have on our global business. Do we assume at least as big of an impact as AI? We also need to consider that when we review the details related to these massive investments, most of that money is directed toward capital spend and infrastructure.

In its own right, that will serve as a catalyst, but there will also be a wave of equally huge marketing investments, business subsidies, and market incentives to support these initiatives. That will compound the overall market shake-up.

A 2023 article in Gulf Business stated, "Saudi Arabia has set its sights on attracting 25 million foreign tourists in 2023 and creating one million jobs in the vital tourism sectors." They are not in this alone either; there is a remarkable level of cooperation happening between nations in the region and business entities.

In 2022, the Mena Report highlighted this: "The Saudi Tourism Authority aligned with Emirates Airlines to promote Saudi tourism, attract travelers, enrich the travel experience, develop services, and exchange information."

This sea change is happening when many countries and States question the value of their destination marketing organizations to maintain tourism levels and drive new visitors. Timing is everything, as we say. They need to weigh the influence of this future competition before eliminating anything.

Just as a new hotel opening in a popular seaside resort causes shifts, price fluctuations, and disruption, can we expect anything else to occur when entire cities are being built out of the sand? Does it matter that billions of dollars get dumped into the global marketing machine? What happens when customers find that new destinations with new luxury amenities and tremendous value are seeking them out? Who are we kidding, not at least to be talking about it?

Is AI more relevant to our industry than all of this? Is it more meaningful? Is it more fun to banter about on a panel discussion? Probably. But the real reason we talk about that and not the billions of competitive dollars being spent on future competitive destinations is that it is far less scary.??

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