Oman has announced a high-altitude destination at Jabal al Akhdar, combining mountain sports, wellness, and heritage tourism. Jabal al Akhdar tourism has an advantage no coastal competitor can copy: its altitude. One government holds every lever needed to grow three markets at once.
Jabal al Akhdar sits at about 2,400 metres, cool enough in summer to be a different country from the coast. The plan is to build a destination there around three markets: high-altitude sports training, wellness, and general tourism. The altitude is the product; the rest is what is built to sell it.
In a Gulf project like this, a single authority can approve the resort, the road, the route and the licensing in the same year. Almost no European destination has that power, and it is the reason this one can grow faster than any of them.
The advantage is speed and coherence, and the way to bank it is to give each market its own case. A destination built for sports training needs a demand case for teams and federations: who would come, in which months, for how long, and what they would pay against the alternatives at similar altitude in Europe and Africa. A destination built for wellness needs a different case, from different markets, in different months. The two can share a site, and each grows faster with its own forecast, because each is marketed to the markets with the most headroom.
Demand by origin, season, and purpose, for each of the three markets, with the assumptions stated. The capacity the site can absorb before the experience that justifies the price degrades, so the premium holds as the resort grows. The route and road: a mountain resort ninety minutes from the airport reaches markets a three-hour one cannot, and the road is a decision the same government controls. The counterfactual: some of the wellness demand exists today and goes to the coast or abroad, and the destination’s growth is the part it adds.
One government controls every lever, so it can sequence them. It can approve the keys in the order demand will fill them, time the route to the opening and release the licences as the hotels open. Sequenced to the demand by market and by month, a resort at altitude fills in the months it was built for and grows into the next phase on its own record. The method is on the pages for national governments and demand forecasting. For further reading, see OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2024.
For a new-build destination, ask for a separate demand forecast for each market it serves, by month, with the assumptions stated. Approve the keys in the order the demand will fill them and open the routes that reach the markets with the most headroom, and the destination grows into its plan.
International visitors to the United States fell 4.2% in 2025, the first annual decline since the pandemic, while worldwide travel grew. The spending did not disappear. It moved. Five economies are absorbing most of it, and the shift now looks structural.
Oman has announced plans for a high-altitude destination at Jabal al Akhdar, combining sports training, wellness, and tourism at 2,400 metres. It is the kind of project a Gulf government can commit to at once, and the kind that lives or dies on a demand case nobody has yet published.
A major event is a rallying point for civic pride, and just as easily a rallying point for protest. The difference is usually whether residents can see what the event does for their street, in terms they recognise, before the road closures start.
The owners of the Bulls and the Blackhawks are putting a reported US$7bn into 55 acres around the United Center: housing, a music hall, a hotel, retail, a park. The arena already hosts more than 200 events a year. The question a developer should ask is what the other 165 nights are worth.
International arrivals to the United States fell 4.2% in 2025 while worldwide travel grew about 4%. Living Lab’s displacement model puts the forgone spending at roughly US$50bn, and about US$10.6bn of it within reach of five economies. Each is limited by a different constraint.
Most destinations run near capacity for part of the year and well below it for the rest. A visitor added in the peak displaces one already there. A visitor added in the shoulder fills an empty room and is served by staff who would otherwise be idle. Almost no destination runs the calculation before fixing a date.
