Want to visit Riaydh for tourism - possible?
 

I am a UK national. No business, no Saudi contacts, travelling as solo man.

All I want to do is experience a few days in Riyadh, go up the Kingdom Tower, and get to be in King Khaled Airport.

The only way I can see this being possible is with a transit visa that would give you a day or so. There have been various success stories here, although mostly from US members.

Can you construct an itinerary that would 'require' a 24-36 hrs transit, maybe on SV ?

Perhaps also talk to a couple of the visa agents in London. They know the Saudi embassy well.

If you do manage to score a visa, I can suggest plenty of things to do. It is a friendly and fascinating country, although a little daunting if you're more used to the west :)

hth

I enjoy many aspects of my business trips to Riyadh, but the joy of King Khalid Airport has eluded me.:)

The mosaic fountains are quite pretty, but I've never seen them switched on :)

I have! Once.

When they were starting the last spruce up, where they put in the mezzanine floor lounges (18 months or so ago?), they turned them on very briefly. Think something had died in the pipe as they smelled horrific so must've written it off as a bad idea.

Although I'm from the US, I was flat-out told "we don't do those," when asking about transit visas in November 2013. Hopefully, they'll be more "lenient" on you!

In December 2013, I saw one of them switched on. Guess I've checked off all of the RUH attractions from the list...

RUH is slightly fascinating. Someone at SV/in Saudi Arabia/neither of the above realized that transit passengers are good for business, so non-Saudi women touting abbayas hob-nob with Scandinavian backpackers without a hitch post-security.

UK passport here. Was denied 48 hour transit visa (with flights already booked), from the Seoul embassy back in 2010.

Apparently you can still apply for a Saudi Transit visa in Dubai, but you can't leave the airport(?):
http://www.almasardubai.com/saudi-vi...or-saudi-visa/

This makes no sense. Wonder if it's just sloppiness and nothing should be read into it?? I thought it's 18 hours allowed w/o a transit visa, and they say 12.

I hate to cite bloggers for anything, but I googled this recently and one airline blogger said it's been shut down as of November 2013, but who knows.

Getting more serious about this now.

I want to fly Saudi, and I want to visit Riyadh. Just a shame it seems they won't allow any tourist visas.

My planned itinerary would be LHR-RUH-CAI (deliberately choosing Saudia, and deliberately with a stopover in RUH rather than JED). I could spend 12 hours overnight at the airport on this booking, which I suppose could get me a transit visa (maybe?), but I want to spend 2 nights at the Ritz Carlton Riyadh, and see the Kingdom Tower, too.

Am I just wasting my time and ambition here? Maybe I should cross off Saudi Arabia forever, but that would be such a shame...

You probably need to contact your local embassy and enquire first, or through a visa company for necessary advice.

From what I've read, you'd need to pretend that your a Muslim on a pilgrimage. Assuming, that is, that you don't have some special visa.

Not to get into OMNI territory, but pretending you're Muslim could have dire consequences and doing a sham conversion to Islam is dangerous as well because apostasy is punishable by death under Islamic law. Though, non-Muslim Westerners been faking their way into Mecca for at least the past couple hundred years, so you wouldn't be the first to get away with it.

I certainly wouldn't recommend violating any law in Saudi Arabia -- even minor ones.

Why are the Saudis so averse to tourism? :td: