SEVEN‘s head of attractions Damien Latham has shared exclusive updates including the locations of the company’s two theme parks in Saudi Arabia during the first ever blooloop V-Expo.
Latham spoke about creating enduring entertainment destinations in Saudi Arabia, which is working on a host of attractions as part of Vision 2030. This aims to diversify the economy in order to reduce the country’s reliance on oil.
SEVEN, a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), is developing a world-class entertainment ecosystem in Saudi Arabia.
“SEVEN, and other entities under the PIF banner, are clearly all focused on that goal of developing entertainment infrastructure and bringing in world-class attractions to the Kingdom,” said Latham.
“Our mandate is still very clear,” he added. “It has remained unchanged.”
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“It’s 20 entertainment complexes across 14 cities and 50 cinemas, in our partnership with AMC cinemas, and two major theme parks.
“We are currently at a more advanced stage of design with our entertainment complexes here in Riyadh,” continued Latham, who also discussed IP.
“We are talking to a number of global IPs that are interested in coming into the Kingdom and working with us, and we’ll continue to extend that invitation to others.
“The sheer amount of entertainment that we’d like to bring in, we’re inviting a multitude of different IP partners to begin those discussions and really start to evolve something and create something new and unique.
“I’m hoping that within the early part of next year, that we’ll be able to make some key announcements there,” said Latham.
“When you’re in 14 different cities, you’ve got the potential there, we think, to create more than 22,000 jobs across KSA.”
SEVEN theme parks located in Damman and Abha
Latham went on to reveal that the two theme parks are in “quite early stages”, but that “we’ve already landed on where”.
“So very much we’ll be looking at Damman as one of our theme park destinations, in fact, there’s a piece of land that we’ve already identified,” he said. “And very much the entertainment complex and theme park will be in adjacencies next to each other.”
“And then the other location is still to be defined, but the area is Abha in the ‘Asir region, which is a totally different climate, a beautiful, mountainous green part of KSA. And somewhere that we think could be a very, very unique proposition.
“You know, a lot of people obviously live and reside in ‘Asir region, more than 2 million in fact, but there is also a huge amount of local tourism, because of the climate.
“So there’s a real opportunity there to work with the local leaders and evolve a wonderful theme park offering down there,” said Latham.
“And when I say theme park, that goes across amusement parks, water parks, and full on theme parks, as would be typically known.
“We’re confident the locations we’ve selected thus far will lead us to developing something quite special.”
