'Put your headscarves back on, we’re not in Riyadh now' - Saudi opens its doors to global tourism

“One of the main pillars of the festival is tourism, which is why we moved it closer to the capital,” Fahd al-Semmari, an official from the culture ministry and the event’s organiser, told the Telegraph. “Saudis are known for their hospitality and now the world will get the chance to see.”

Officials announced last month that electronic visas would be available to "all nationals whose countries allow their citizens to visit" by the end of the first quarter of 2018.

Their hope is to double the annual number of visitors it attracts to 30 million by 2030 and to raise £33bn from them in the next two years.

Tourism could also be among topics on the agenda when Crown Prince Mohammed visits London this month in an attempt to show off his modernising agenda. The exact date of the diplomatically sensitive visit has so far been kept a secret, amid expectations of protests against Saudi's human rights record.

Driving around Riyadh, it feels like a city preparing for big change.

Building work is nearly complete on an 85-station metro line - the country’s first ever public transport network. Multiplex cinemas, which are returning to the kingdom after a 30-year ban, are springing up across the capital.

A 200-sq mile “entertainment city” - in the early days of construction a few miles to the south - will feature a safari and a Six Flags theme park when it opens in 2021.

“Because Saudi has been behind closed doors for so long, people have become incredibly curious,” Jarrod Kyte, product director at UK-based travel agency Steppes, told the Telegraph. “They want to tick off the most conservative country on earth.”

He said a large number of their clients have already registered interest. “Once the kingdom begins granting tourist visas to the UK - which we’re told will be very soon - we’ll have no shortage of people wanting to go.”

He said their package tours would include some of the world’s least-explored heritage sites, including Mada'in Saleh, home to the best preserved Nabatean tombs, Al-’Ula, a 2,000-year-old ghost town made of stone and mud, and Sakaka, listed by UNESCO for its ancient standing stones.

The kingdom also plans to turn 50 islands on the pristine Red Sea coastline into luxury resorts, in the hope of rivalling other Middle East hotspots such as Dubai and Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

“Obviously there are cultural sensibilities that need to be observed,” Mr Kyte added. “We’ll provide guidebooks on what is appropriate to do where.”

For this reason the ultra-conservative country, notorious for sex segregation and strict Islamic dress code, is still seen as an unlikely destination for global tourists.

Negotiating the social and religious mores of the kingdom can be complicated.

Shapeless, floor-length black abayas are to be worn by women in public. The rules on headscarves are more flexible. They are not required for foreigners in more liberal cities such as Jeddah and some parts of Riyadh, but a must in Mecca and Medina.

In an effort to change perceptions, the royal court has relaxed some of its most rigid regulations - allowing gender-mixed sporting events and announcing that women will be allowed to drive from June.

Single foreign women over the age of 25 will also now be permitted to travel to the kingdom without a male guardian.

“We’ve been told by the tourism ministry to prepare,” a hotel manager at a four-star hotel in Riyadh told the Telegraph. “Our staff will be allowed to shake a Western female guest’s hand, they must treat her as she would be at home.

“But at the same time we must not forget this is not the way to behave around Saudi women. It’s a two-tier system we’ll have to get used to.”

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, is underpinned by a strict interpretation of Sharia law which governs most aspects of everyday life for its citizens: from the rights of women to property ownership.

The House of Saud has an historic alliance with hardline clerics, whose fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fuelled domestic terrorism and contributed to global extremism.

The 32-year-old crown prince vowed as part of Vision 2030 to destroy "extremist ideologies" and return the country to "a more moderate Islam”, saying his father’s generation led them down a problematic path.

But Western diplomats told the Telegraph the royal family has shown few other signs they intend to abandon Wahhabism or cut loose its most prominent proponents, particularly as the kingdom ups the stakes in the sectarian conflict with regional rival Iran.

Crown Prince Mohammed’s decision to intervene in the conflict in neighbouring Yemen, where it is supporting the government fighting Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, has also done little to improve Saudi’s image.

Its air and sea blockade of the war-torn country has helped create the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Its indiscriminate bombing of schools and hospitals has left hundreds dead, leading even its EU allies to call for an arms embargo.

In a bid to help counter negative press, the kingdom has hired a long list of top British and American public relations companies. Some of whom were seen stage-managing a recent press conference in Riyadh, where the Saudi-led coalition announced to great fanfare a $1.5bn aid package to Yemen.

“Before they just didn’t care how they appeared to the world, they would just say it was none of their business,” one British adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said candidly at the sidelines of the conference. “Now, they cannot afford not to care what the international community thinks. They need the yankee dollar.”