The Royal Commission for AlUla Launches Its Second Winter at Tantora Festival of Culture, Heritage and Celebration in Saudi Arabia
20.12.2019 00:21:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
The second Winter at Tantora Festival in AlUla in North West Saudi Arabia starts today – a three-month celebration that will showcase the very best in international music, art and culture connecting East and West as the AlUla county has done for thousands of years.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191219005781/en/
Winter at Tantora: Experience AlUla (Photo : AETOSWire)
It comes just months after Saudi Arabia introduced tourist visas to citizens from 49 countries making the Kingdom more accessible than ever with the UNESCO World Heritage site at Hegra in AlUla among those featured in a global marketing campaign.
The festival is part of the Cultural Manifesto that was launched by the festival organisers, the Royal Commission for AlUla, in Paris in October as part of a long-term strategy to transform the region and open the region as a global living museum and place of culture, heritage and the arts.
Winter at Tantora will cover 12 weekends from 19th December and host a wide range of events from the world-famous Dakar Rally; international ballooning festival; the world’s second longest endurance horse race; the world’s first desert polo tournament and welcome pop-up restaurants from globally renowned restaurants.
The spectacular mirrored wall Maraya Theatre with its 500-seat capacity and operatic sound quality will be home throughout the festival to some of the world’s leading performers who range from Omar Khairat to Andrea Bocelli.
Festival visitors will also be able to meet and engage with young members of the AlUla community who are benefitting from a diverse range of training programmes in hospitality; culture; nature and the environment and studying overseas including 24 men and women at the FERRANDI Paris culinary institute in Paris.
These young chefs will work alongside Michelin-starred experts during the festival creating world-class cuisine that will incorporate local ingredients from the fertile AlUla valley and blending traditional recipes with modern cuisine.
RCU CEO Amr AlMadani says: “Festival visitors will be given a unique opportunity to visit and experience one of the world’s undiscovered places and its spectacular heritage sites before we reopen them to the world in October 2020.
“They will get a tantalising glimpse of a place that been a cultural crossroads for thousands of years and the chance to see it from the serenity of a hot air balloon; the adrenaline of soaring over the desert and mountains in an open seater biplane or exploring hidden canyons in traditional vintage Land Rovers.”
The Royal Commission for AlUla has also completed major infrastructure work at AlUla airport – increasing capacity fourfold to 400,000 visitors a year and upgrading local mountain resorts to enhance the visitor experience.
AlUla will be a worldwide destination for those seeking a unique experience of the full meaning and context of landscape – an experience that integrates the natural and cultural heritage as one living environment. By safeguarding our precious landscapes and cultural heritage this open-air museum will be the Kingdom’s gift to the world creating remarkable and lasting memories.
‘Authentic AlUla’, the opening weekend, is a celebration rooted in AlUla, to mark the start of the winter planting season at the iconic Tantora sundial from which the festival is named. It is the first of 12 specially themed weekends.
Notes to editors
To find out more about the Winter at Tantora festival and details of packages and the entertainment and cultural programmes, log on to www.experiencealula.com
To find out more about how the Royal Commission for AlUla is working with the community to develop a world-class tourism destination, log on to www.rcu.gov.sa
*Source: AETOSWire
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191219005781/en/
Contact information
RCU Public Relations team
The head of PR at RCU
Antony Newton
PublicRelations@rcu.gov.sa
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
DDN Selected to Modernize Research Data Infrastructure at UNSW Sydney26.10.2026 23:30:00 EET | Press release
DDN, the global leader in AI and data intelligence solutions, today announced that UNSW Sydney has selected DDN to deliver a new research data storage environment as part of the university’s Research Data Experience (RDE) program. Working with Australian software company Arcitecta, DDN will combine its EXAScaler parallel file system with Arcitecta’s Mediaflux® data management platform to help researchers spend less time managing data and more time using it. Following an extensive 18-month evaluation, UNSW selected an integrated approach that will replace 11 legacy storage systems with a coordinated environment for high-performance storage and enterprise data management. The decision reflects a broader challenge facing research-intensive institutions: how to support rapidly expanding scientific datasets while simplifying infrastructure, improving data accessibility and managing long-term costs. Built for data-intensive research, high-performance computing and AI workloads, DDN EXAScaler
Agent Assurance by TestMu AI Is Now Generally Available, Letting Teams Test What Their AI Agents Actually Change26.10.2026 17:15:00 EET | Press release
TestMu AI (formerly LambdaTest), the world's first Agentic AI-powered Quality Engineering platform, today announced the general availability of Agent Assurance. Agent Assurance tests AI agents that take actions, such as calling tools, writing files, and changing records, by checking what a run actually changed rather than what the agent says it did. Any team can now create a TestMu AI account and run it against its own agent without booking a demo first. Agent Assurance launched on August 17, 2026, behind a waitlist and a guided onboarding session. Since then, Rook, the CLI that runs Agent Assurance, has shipped a steady run of releases, shaped by feedback from early teams. Agent evaluation has mostly graded the final reply, and that reply can be wrong about the agent's own work. In CXBench, a benchmark of LLM agents in regulated customer-experience workflows published in October 2026, 80.1% of runs that reached the right outcome still failed the process checks, and only 13.8% passed b
Actiphy Announces ImageServer for Centralized Backup Storage and Post-Backup Processing26.10.2026 17:13:00 EET | Press release
Actiphy™, Inc., a provider of backup, disaster recovery, and virtualization software, today announced Actiphy ImageServer™, a centralized platform for storing, managing, verifying, and replicating backups created with ActiveImage Protector™. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261026410729/en/ Actiphy ImageServer Console ImageServer combines the management capabilities of Actiphy ImageCenter™ with the secure storage of Actiphy StorageServer™. By moving Verify, Replication, Consolidation, and BootCheck™ to a dedicated server, ImageServer reduces processing load on protected systems and simplifies backup administration. As organizations protect more systems and retain more backup generations, storage and administrative demands grow. ImageServer addresses these challenges by centralizing backup storage and management and automating post-backup processing. Key capabilities include: Inter-File Deduplication™ — Identifi
Dubai Chambers Launches World's First Agentic AI Marketplace by a Chamber of Commerce26.10.2026 17:06:00 EET | Press release
Dubai Chambers has launched Chamber AI Hub, the world's first Agentic AI marketplace developed by a chamber of commerce, enabling businesses in Dubai to access ready-to-use AI agents that independently perform a range of administrative and operational tasks. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261026467531/en/ H.E. Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansoori Chairman of Dubai Chambers. (Photo: AETOSWire) The marketplace currently offers 22 specialised AI agents across seven business functions including Compliance, Procurement, Operations, Finance, Sales, Human Resources, and Logistics. The offering is set to expand to 100 agents. The initiative supports Dubai's efforts to accelerate the adoption of Agentic AI across the private sector, helping businesses enhance efficiency, strengthen competitiveness, and transform their operating models. H.E. Eng. Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansoori, Chairman of Dubai Chambers, commented: “Success in
Media Release: Allianz Beach Arena for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games Joins the Allianz Family of Stadiums26.10.2026 16:37:00 EET | Press release
For the first time in Olympic and Paralympic history, a competition venue will carry the Allianz name. The Allianz Beach Arena in Long Beach, California, for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games will become the newest member of the Allianz Family of Stadiums. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261026919959/en/ Allianz's "custom A" emblem for LA28. From Horse Guards Parade in London to Copacabana Beach in Rio and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Olympic Beach Volleyball has always found its home in iconic settings around the world. At the LA28 Games, that home will carry the Allianz name. Allianz is proud to help celebrate this exciting sport in Long Beach, a city in the southern part of Los Angeles County where beach volleyball is part of everyday life and local culture. Set right on the Long Beach waterfront, the nearly 15,000 seat temporary arena will host the Olympic Beach Volleyball and the Paralympic Blind Footba
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom