Salman A. Alarifi

General Manager of Technology Enablement

Salman A. Alarifi is General Manager of Technology Enablement at Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Tourism, where he leads the artificial intelligence effort across the Kingdom's tourism ecosystem and the technology and data foundations that carry the sector's digital transformation. The ministry works to a published national tourism AI vision aimed at a smarter, more efficient and more sustainable tourism system, positioning the Kingdom as a centre for smart tourism innovation; its components include the TourismX platform of AI tools for tourism businesses, an AI assistant built into the ministry's traveller application, and a developers' portal that opens tourism data and APIs to the private sector. Before moving into government he co-founded startups in the machine learning and artificial intelligence space, and earlier in his career worked in technology consulting and technology investment.