Saudi Tourism Authority

Challenge: STA needed to evaluate the strategic balance between participating in international third-party trade events and hosting owned events within the Kingdom. This required a comprehensive assessment of Saudi Arabia's infrastructural readiness for large-scale events, an analysis of the global IP event landscape, and a determination of the long-term ROI of creating original event brands versus hosting established international formats.

Role: I led the strategy development from initial diagnostic through to implementation planning. This included a comprehensive audit of the existing event portfolio, an evaluation of the destination's capacity for large-scale owned events, and benchmarking against global DMO best practices. I identified high-value third-party IP partnerships and developed a three-year events strategy, providing actionable recommendations to optimise presence at key global forums.

Outcome: The three-year strategy directly enabled the successful delivery of the destination’s inaugural owned global trade event in 2025 and provided a clear schedule of events (owned, third party, in-KSA, and elsewhere) over the coming years, as well as corresponding governance structure for managing these. The roadmap ensured the destination could scale its event hosting capabilities while maintaining high operational standards and strategic alignment with IP partners.