The Future of Middle East Travel and Tourism: 5 Big Questions For CEOs

The Middle East's travel and tourism ambitions can seem unbelievable: 150 million visitors into the once-closed off Saudi Arabia, 40 million visitors to the UAE – big goals keep getting more ambitious. The Skift Global Forum East returns to Dubai from December 12 to 14 and we'll be speaking to the most important travel executives from the region to better understand how it might all play out.

I'm Skift's reporter based in Dubai, and here are the questions I'm excited to get answers to.

Dubai is a small city, similar to the size of Houston, Texas, and much of its land is a desert.

And yet, by the end of this year, Dubai is projected to have 140,000 hotel rooms – th