SINGAPORE -- As COVID-19 vaccination programs roll out across the world, tourism-dependent countries are feverishly hoping that visitors will return to their cleaner-than-ever shores from sometime this year.
One such country is Saudi Arabia, a repressive regime that was previously off-limits to international leisure travelers but now has ambitions to be the world's fifth most-visited destination by 2030. It may be hard to imagine this unlikely newcomer to global tourism outdoing a very affable Italy -- the current titleholder with 65 million visitors in 2019 -- but then stranger things have happened.
