November 29, 2023 | The Dubai Headlines

Millions of “Neomians” will live in this Saudi megacity by 2030.

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According to the project’s head of tourism, millions of people will live in Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion future metropolis, Neom, by 2030.

Arrivals are anticipated to start in 2024.

Within the next ten years, two million “Neomians” should reside in the city, according to Andrew McEvoy, who spoke with The National.

Speaking outside of the Arabian Travel Market, which is presently taking place at Dubai’s World Trade Center, was Mr. McEvoy.

“As our first tourism assets open in 2024, you will see a lot of movement,” Mr. McEvoy stated.

“Work has already begun, and the tourism initiatives will launch at that point.”

Numerous tourist destinations, such as the Trojena mountain destination, will be located in Neom.

It is scheduled to open in 2026 and will feature mountain biking, a ski slope, and watersports facilities. Additionally, an interactive nature reserve will be included.

Neom is intended to be a smart city that runs on renewable energy.

The Wall Street Journal claims that because of previously disclosed plans that included flying taxis, holographic teachers teaching classes, and an artificial moon, it has drawn attention from all over the world.

Neom will be governed independently of the laws governing the rest of Saudi Arabia, according to Mr. McEvoy. This will increase its attractiveness to tourists and those thinking about moving there, he claimed.

Many people find it appealing because it offers the opportunity to virtually start from scratch in the creation of a new nation, he said.

“It’s a great way to get motivated for your career, and the Public Investment Fund will help make it happen.”Neom shall be regarded as a nation inside a nation, possessing its own sovereign territory and economic zone. The laws and regulations must align with the goals of the people we are trying to draw to this area to live and work.

Additionally, he stated that the locals would be referred to as “Neomians” rather than Saudis.

About 2,000 Neomians and 10,000 construction workers already reside there, according to Mr. McEvoy.

“We’re already drawing in a lot of experts in the energy, water, and health sectors who will be relocating here to live and work.”

Selling alcohol is a possibility.

In an effort to draw tourists and business from abroad, he also declined to rule out the sale of alcohol. He declared, “It’s definitely not off the table” to alcohol.

“We must match what competing destinations are offering if we want to be competitive.”

He added that the project is on track to be car-free by 2030.

“There will be a slight period of transition, but the city is being built to be completely car-free,” Mr. McEvoy stated.

Many of the modes of transportation of the future, such as electric hybrids, are already available, and we’re testing concepts like flying taxis.

“This is about supplying the travel of the future.”

An additional key area of emphasis for the project is sustainability. According to Mr. McEvoy, younger people are driving this because they are more committed to halting climate change than previous generations were.

“A new generation of young Saudis is driving this with a strong embrace of a new future, with Neom serving as a beacon of that future,” the statement reads.

entreprenuership

Dubai Taxi Company valued at $1.26bn in oversubscribed offering

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After setting its price at the top of the range, Dubai Taxi Company reported that it raised Dh1.2 billion (roughly $315 million) in its initial public offering.

Following the book building and public subscription process, DTC said in a statement on Wednesday that the final offer price was set at Dh1.85 per share, resulting in an offering size of approximately Dh1.2 billion for a total of 624.75 million shares, or 24.99 percent of the company’s total issued share capital.

The market capitalization of Dubai Taxi Company upon listing is anticipated to be Dh4.6 billion ($1.26 billion) based on the final offer price.

The initial public offering (IPO) price range was previously set at Dh1.80 to Dh1.85 per share.

The donation In addition to local and foreign institutional investors, the IPO attracted “tremendous demand” from UAE retail investors.
The offering received over Dh150 billion ($41 billion) in demand overall, indicating a 130-fold oversubscription level overall. The company stated that this represents the “highest oversubscription level achieved by an IPO on the DFM [Dubai Financial Market]”.

The offering for qualified investors was nearly 135 times oversubscribed.

Mansoor Alfalasi, CEO of Dubai Taxi Company, stated, “The exceptionally strong demand for the IPO, which was 130 times oversubscribed, reflects the high-quality investment opportunity provided by DTC, anchored in Dubai’s robust economic, population, and tourism growth and world-leading mobility and sustainability vision.”

After deducting any offering-related costs, the Department of Finance, acting on behalf of the Dubai government, will receive a total of about Dh1.2 billion in gross proceeds from the IPO, DTC continued.
The Department of Finance will retain ownership of 75.01 percent of DTC’s share capital after the IPO is completed.

Subject to approvals, the offering and listing are anticipated to be completed on December 7.

In order to bring the size of its financial market to Dh3 trillion ($816.8 billion), Dubai announced plans in November 2021 to list ten state-owned companies. In addition, the city planned to establish a Dh2 billion marketmaker fund to encourage the listing of more private companies from industries like energy, logistics, and retail.

Last year, four of the ten state-owned businesses that were announced were listed on the Dubai Financial Market.

The approximately 7,000 cars in the fleet of the 1995-founded Dubai Taxi Company serve the city-state’s expanding population. With a market share of roughly 44%, it is the largest taxi operator in the emirate.

In the first half of this year, approximately 96 million trips were taken on Dubai’s fleet of taxis, of which more than 70% were hybrids.

The IPO’s joint lead managers, Emirates NBD Capital, First Abu Dhabi Bank, and EFG Hermes UAE, have been named.

The Emirates NBD is the primary receiving bank.

Food & Beverages

Top competitive eater shares little-known details about competitive eating, such as “stretch meals” and gulping without chewing.

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Food challenges are best enjoyed in Dubai, according to James Webb, the man who holds the world record for eating 276 chicken wings in less than 12 minutes. He also discusses what it takes to be a “professional eater.”
A tall man with a body builder’s physique is adjusting his well-organized 5-camera setup in the center of Mr. Brisket, located on Palm Jumeirah’s Golden Mile 4. We meet James Webb, the top-ranked competitive eater from Australia who ranks fifth globally, as he prepares for a brisket-eating challenge.

With an impressive resume in competitive eating, Webb presently owns world records for the fastest consumption of 276 chicken wings in 12 minutes and the fastest consumption of 59.5 donuts in an 8-minute display.

Known on social media as “J Webby Can Eat,” Webb is the first Australian to challenge Americans in competitive eating. He also achieved an impressive third place in the Nathan’s Hotdog Eating Contest, which was held in Coney Island, New York City.

In an attempt to pass the time during the pandemic, James began making food videos for entertainment, just like a lot of people all over the world who discovered or revived hobbies. When he was placed under lockdown in Australia, he turned to his passion for cooking and making videos, which quickly gained popularity on the internet, for comfort.
However, his initial encounter with a culinary contest occurred during an accidental lunch excursion to a nearby hamburger restaurant in Australia. A picture of this enormous burger that appeared to have been Photoshopped was hanging on the wall. I had no idea that it was the largest burger in Australia. Inquiring further, the proprietor revealed with pride, “That’s my undefeated Burger Challenge.” It has never been defeated. Fifty-five people have made the attempt and utterly failed.

Competitive eating: what is it?
In the United States, eating competitively is regarded as a sport. Competing eaters, also referred to as professional eaters, eat a lot of food in a short amount of time. These competitions, which are also well-liked in Canada and Japan, are frequently held at festivals or events and draw competitors and spectators from all over the world.

After a few months, Webb made the decision to fully commit to competitive eating and quit his day job. “Well, what’s the worst that can happen? my wife said, even though I wasn’t entirely convinced. You return and land a new position.

Webb took a two-week vacation from his full-time job in sales and marketing to the US, where he not only participated in multiple food challenges but also returned with a professional contract. After becoming the first Australian to earn a spot at Coney Island and the prestigious Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, Webb came to the realization that he had to carve out a place for himself in this world.

Technology

At re:Invent, AWS introduces new chips, AI capabilities, and improved cloud offerings.

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Experts in cloud computing, clients, and tech enthusiasts have flocked to Las Vegas for the event, which runs through December 1.
In an effort to expand its portfolio and compete with rivals like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP for market share, Amazon Web Services has announced the development of faster chips, the most recent generative artificial intelligence capabilities to boost productivity, and the general availability of Amazon S3 express one zone, its newest high-performance cloud storage service.

The cloud belongs to all of us. At AWS’s annual re: Invent event in Las Vegas, Nevada, CEO Adam Selipsky stated, “Customers of all sizes, all industries, and from all regions are using AWS cloud.”

Top businesses use the AWS cloud. Our clientele is drawn from a variety of sectors, such as the financial, medical, and automotive industries.
The event runs through December 1st, and cloud computing experts, customers, and tech enthusiasts have converged on Las Vegas.

The lowest latency cloud object storage is now offered by the new Amazon S3 express one zone, and users can scale their storage up or down as needed.

According to Mr. Selipsky, it provides data access speeds up to ten times faster and is up to fifty percent less expensive than the Amazon S3 standard.

With millions of users worldwide, Amazon S3, one of the most well-known cloud storage services, was introduced 17 years ago.

On average, over 100 million requests are made per second, and it can store over 350 trillion objects.
Emerging use cases that call for writing and gaining access to data millions of times per minute, like financial model simulations, interactive analytics, machine learning and AI training, real-time advertising, and media content creation, are well suited for it.

According to James Kirschner, general manager of Amazon S3 at AWS, the goal of Amazon S3 express one zone is to lower request and compute costs while providing the “fastest data access speed for the most latency-sensitive applications and enable customers to make millions of requests per minute for their highly accessed data sets”.

The largest cloud service provider in the world, Amazon, saw strong sales growth in the September quarter.

In the third quarter of the year, its revenue amounted to $23.1 billion, indicating an annual increase of over 12.2 percent.
The company also unveiled AWS Trainium2 and AWS Graviton4, the next generation of AWS-designed chip families. “Advancements in price performance and energy efficiency” are what the new chips are meant to provide for a variety of customer workloads, such as generative AI and machine learning training.

Graviton4 offers 75 percent more memory bandwidth and up to 30 percent better computing performance than Graviton3 processors, which are still in production today.

This is AWS’s fourth chip generation in five years, and according to the company, it’s the “most powerful and energy efficient chip the company has ever built” for a variety of workloads.

In contrast to the first-generation Trainium chips, Trainium2 is intended to provide training at a rate up to four times faster. According to AWS, it can double energy efficiency and train large language models and foundation models in a fraction of the time.

David Brown, vice president of compute and networking at AWS, stated that since silicon is the foundation of every customer workload, it is an essential area for innovation.

“We are able to provide our customers with the most cutting-edge cloud infrastructure by concentrating our chip designs on real workloads that matter to them.”

Speeches, innovation talks, builder labs, workshops, demos, and service announcements are all part of the 12th annual re: Invent event. There are about 50,000 people in attendance in person, and 300,000 people are watching the event online.

New generative AI features have also been announced by AWS for Amazon Connect, the cloud contact center that helps businesses provide better customer experiences at lower costs.

According to AWS, the new features—which are powered by large language models—aim to revolutionize the way businesses offer customer service.

For quicker, more precise customer service, Amazon Q in Connect, for instance, will offer agents suggested answers and actions based on inquiries from customers in real time.

With AI-generated summaries that identify sentiment, trends, and policy compliance, the Amazon Connect contact lens assists in identifying the crucial elements of call center conversations.

An additional feature Contact center managers can quickly develop new chatbots and interactive voice response systems with Amazon Lex by utilizing natural language prompts. By providing answers to frequently asked questions, it could enhance current systems.

Pasquale DeMaio, vice president of Amazon Connect at AWS applications, stated that the contact center sector is set to be “fundamentally transformed by generative AI,” providing customer care representatives with new avenues to provide personalized customer experiences.

“Yet, very few organizations possess the sophisticated machine learning know-how to quickly and effectively integrate this technology into their daily operations.”

Additionally, the business unveiled Amazon Q, a brand-new generative AI-powered assistant designed to “streamline tasks, speed decision making, and spark creativity, built with rock-solid security and privacy,” according to Mr. Selipsky. Amazon Q is intended to deliver actionable information in real time.

Travel & Explore

In Aseer, Saudi Arabia will build a $347 million entertainment complex.

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As part of the kingdom’s diversification efforts, Saudi Entertainment Ventures (Seven), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund, has opened a 1.3 billion Saudi riyal ($346.6 million) entertainment destination in the Aseer region.

The development, called Seven Abha, is the company’s fifth project of this kind in the kingdom. It spans 64,000 square meters and has a built-up area of over 79,000 square meters, Seven announced on Sunday.

It is situated halfway between Abha and Khamis Mushait. Gensler, a renowned international architecture firm, designed it, and Modern Building Leaders has been tasked with completing the construction.

According to Seven, the project is expected to generate “hundreds” of direct and indirect jobs in Aseer by 2030, bring in more than five million visitors, and add more than four billion riyals to the country’s GDP.
As per Prince Turki bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the chairman of the Aseer Development Authority, the Aseer region is “witnessing an unprecedented renaissance across different sectors and verticals”.

“One of the key projects in Aseer that will support our ambition to become a global destination all year round is Seven’s entertainment destination in Abha.”

As part of its Vision 2030 diversification agenda, Saudi Arabia, the largest oil exporter in the world, is changing its economy in an effort to lessen its reliance on oil, support homegrown industries, and create jobs.

A major component of its diversification strategy is tourism, and in an effort to spur industry growth and draw in more capital, the kingdom passed a new tourism law last year.

By 2030, it aims to increase the tourism sector’s economic contribution from 3% to 5% of GDP.

The kingdom is working on several tourism-related projects, such as Qiddiya, a massive entertainment and sports complex in Riyadh, and Neom, a $500 billion futuristic city. On the west coast of Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea Development Company is also constructing a massive tourist complex.

To further aid in the expansion of the kingdom’s tourism industry, the PIF also founded the Saudi Tourism Investment Company, or Asfar, in July.

According to the PIF at the time, the company will make investments in brand-new tourism initiatives and create locations in Saudi Arabian cities that offer lodging, attractions, shopping, and food and drink options.
As part of its mandate to develop the sector, Seven is investing over 50 billion riyals to build 21 entertainment destinations throughout the kingdom.

Fourteen cities—Riyadh, Kharj, Makkah, Jeddah, Taif, Dammam, Khobar, Al Ahsa, Madinah, Yanbu, Abha, Jizan, Buraidah, and Tabuk—are home to the upcoming projects.

Eight attractions total will be available at Seven Abha, including a family-friendly amusement park with rides, arcade games, and virtual reality sections.

It will also feature a 12-hole indoor golf adventure area, a Play-Doh themed entertainment center, and a Discovery Adventures jungle-themed attraction.

Live events will take place at a multipurpose venue. Other features of the project include a 10-lane futuristic bowling concept, indoor e-karting on multilevel tracks, an AMC 10-screen theater, retail stores, and food and beverage options.

For the attractions, Seven has agreements with Cundall, Theme 3, Top Notch, Holofice, Thinkwell, and Sea Quest.