INVESTMENT WATCH- Saudi Arabia’s Al Tayyar Travel Group is planning to expand into Egypt in early 2018, its CEO Abdullah Aldawood told Reuters on Wednesday. The move is part of a broader restructuring to build the firm’s leisure, hospitality and online sales services and will consolidate subsidiaries into four new business units, Aldawood added. The plan shifts the focus of the company, Saudi’s largest private tourism operator, from a traditionally heavy reliance on government travel contracts into advising leisure travelers on tourism plans, operating hotels and developing Arabic-language platforms for online ticket booking. The size of Egypt investment was not disclosed. The company is also planning to list a real estate investment trust (REIT), which manages Al Tayyar’s underdeveloped real estate holdings, on the stock market in 1Q 2018 and develop 30 new mid-market hotels with 6,000 rooms in partnership with US-based Choice Hotels. The move comes after the company’s founder, Nasser bin Aqeel al-Tayyar, was detained as part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s anti-corruption probe.

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