NEOM City Muslim Travel Guide

Neom (styled NEOM; Arabic: نيوم‎ Neom, Hejazi pronunciation:) is a planned cross-border city in the Tabuk Province of northwestern Saudi Arabia. It is planned to incorporate smart city technologies and also function as a tourist destination. The site is north of the Red Sea, east of Egypt across the Strait of Tiran, and south of  Jordan It will cover a total area of 26,500 km2 (10,200 sq mi) and will extend 460 km along the coast of the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia aims to complete the first section of Neom by 2025. The project has an estimated cost of $500 billion. On January 29, 2019, Saudi Arabia has announced setting up a closed joint-stock company named Neom with $500 billion. The aim of this company that is wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund, is to develop the economic zone of Neom. The project is planned to be totally powered by renewable energy sources. Nadhmi Al-Nasr is the CEO of the Neom Joint-stock company.

The Neom project is located in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia in the northwest of the kingdom, extended along with Aqaba Gulf and 468 km of coastline with beaches and coral reefs, as well as mountains up to 2,500 m high, with a total area of around 26,500 sq. km

Climate

The region selected for Neom has a relatively mild climate compared to most of Saudi Arabia

Neom Bay

The development work of the project’s first phase, Neom Bay, was planned to start in the first quarter of 2019 and be completed by 2020.  The developments were to include constructing the airport at Sharma which would operate regular commercial flights between Riyadh and Neom. The plan of Neom Bay’s developments also involves building the first residential area in Neom as part of phase 1.

NEOM Bay Airport

In June 2019, it was announced that the NEOM Bay Airport would start to receive commercial flights after the first phase of the airport was completed with runway’s length of 3,757 meters.  The airport that is planned to be located at Neom Bay has been registered by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) with the code ‘NUM’.