PIF puts Al Khafji on Saudi tourism map

PIF is pushing the Kingdom’s tourism map north to the Kuwaiti border. The sovereign wealth fund has launched Gulf Coast Development Company to build a 20 sq km integrated tourism and residential destination in Al Khafji, in the northern Eastern Province, according to a press release. The project runs along 10 km of the city’s Arabian Gulf waterfront.

The destination will eventually hold eight residential neighborhoods, more than 16k housing units and around 1.4k hotel keys, alongside commercial, tourism, educational, and marina facilities. It will be built in three phases, with the first — the neighborhoods, plus groundwork for the wider community — due for completion in 2030.

The private sector has an in: Gulf Coast Development Company will develop the destination with private-sector players and local and regional investors. That squares with PIF’s new 2026-2030 strategy, which moves the fund from building toward optimizing and from public sector leadership toward more private sector participation. The tourism, travel, and entertainment sector is one of six domestic ecosystems under the Vision Portfolio, alongside urban development and livability.

Why it matters: Al Khafji’s position on the Kuwaiti border gives the project a built-in catchment of visitors and residents from the Kingdom, Kuwait, and the wider GCC, and puts hotel supply in a corner of the Eastern Province that has had little of it.

The provincial pipeline is filling up: PIF-owned Asfar has signed MoUs with Al Ahsa Municipality and with private-sector companies to develop tourism projects in the governorate, PIF’s Dan Company brought in Hilton to operate three resorts in Al Ahsa across a 1.8 mn sqm Al Ahsa development, and the Eastern Province signed an investment agreement with PIF’s THE RIG to build infrastructure, including a marina, for the offshore rig-inspired destination.