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
Garvan Institute of Medical Research Joins Parse Biosciences’ Certified Service Provider Network15.7.2026 23:00:00 EEST | Press release
Parse Biosciences, a QIAGEN company, and the leader in scalable and accessible single cell sequencing, today announced that the Genomics Platform Core Facility within the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has joined its Certified Service Provider (CSP) Program. The partnership broadens access to high-quality, scalable single cell sequencing across Australia, the wider Asia-Pacific region, and beyond. Garvan is one of Australia's preeminent medical research institutions, with the Genomics Platform having deep experience in cell sorting, capture, and sequencing. As a Certified Service Provider, Garvan will offer Parse's Evercode WT kits to researchers across the region. "We see a growing number of requests for Parse projects and find the technology easy to implement and run, generating great data," said Chris O'Keeffe, Cellular Genomics Lead at the Garvan Institute. "Garvan is one of the most respected biomedical research institutions in the world, and we're honored to welcome them to
Grafana Labs Named a Leader in 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Observability Platforms and Positioned Furthest in Completeness of Vision15.7.2026 21:21:00 EEST | Press release
Grafana Labs, the company behind the open observability cloud, today announced it has been named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Observability Platforms for the third consecutive year, and positioned furthest on the Completeness of Vision axis for the second year running. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260715814984/en/ 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Observability Platforms We believe this placement reflects where the market is headed: toward open, composable observability that helps teams in the AI era understand systems that are increasingly complex and agentic, and rapidly scaling thanks to AI-assisted engineering. A Platform Built for the AI Era According to Grafana Labs’ 2026 Observability Survey, operational complexity and overhead are now the top observability challenge, even as adoption of managed observability continues to climb, with half of organizations now using managed observabili
Spectro Cloud Raises $100 Million Series D to Help Customers Move AI Infrastructure Into Production Across Enterprise, Public Sector, Neocloud and Sovereign Cloud Environments15.7.2026 19:20:00 EEST | Press release
Spectro Cloud, a leading provider of AI infrastructure management software, today announced it has raised more than $100 million in an oversubscribed Series D funding round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with strategic participation from AMD Ventures, Ericsson, LG Technology Ventures, and Maximus. The new funding brings Spectro Cloud’s total capital raised to $260 million and will accelerate the company’s mission to help enterprises, public sector organizations, neoclouds and sovereign clouds build and operate production AI infrastructure with greater control over cost, security and governance. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260715551858/en/ Spectro Cloud raises $100 million Series D funding round to accelerate global adoption of production AI infrastructure. Learn more at spectrocloud.com. Organizations are spending billions on AI silicon and compute capacity. But silicon alone does not
K-Beauty Goes Global: Sales Surge 53% as Korean Innovation Reshapes Beauty Growth15.7.2026 17:00:00 EEST | Press release
NIQ (NYSE: NIQ), a global leader in consumer intelligence, today released new findings showing K-Beauty has become a rapidly growing global beauty segment, with value sales up 53% year-over-year and 131% over the past two years. The data points to a broader shift in beauty growth, as regional innovation, social commerce and digitally driven consumer demand increasingly shape what scales globally. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260715867578/en/ K-Beauty accelerates across global markets In its latest report, K-Beauty Goes Global, NIQ shows how Korean beauty is reshaping consumer expectations, accelerating innovation cycles and redefining competitive dynamics across the global beauty market. What began as a culturally driven trend now offers a broader signal about the future of beauty: regional trends are increasingly driving global opportunity, and brands need timely intelligence to know which signals will sca
Stonebranch Recognized as a Representative Vendor in the 2026 Gartner ® Market Guide for Infrastructure Automation and Orchestration Tools15.7.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Stonebranch, a leading provider of service orchestration and automation solutions, today announced it has been recognized as a Representative Vendor in the 2026 Gartner Market Guide for Infrastructure Automation and Orchestration (IA&O) Tools.* “Stonebranch is honored to be recognized in Gartner’s 2026 Market Guide for IA&O Tools,” said Giuseppe Damiani, Stonebranch CEO. “AI, platform engineering, and hybrid infrastructure are changing how organizations operate, and we’re excited to help our customers navigate that shift with a unified platform for intelligent orchestration.” The 2026 Market Guide reflects an evolution in the IA&O market, emphasizing infrastructure orchestration as a foundational capability for platform engineering, AI infrastructure, and modern hybrid IT operations. Gartner also notes that organizations are increasingly adopting platforms that provide low-code interfaces, AI capabilities, and AI agents to accelerate automation adoption and improve operational efficien
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