What is the CURRENT population count in Neom?
Do you have a picture of the harbor, or potential harbor? To have international access, a place needs a natural harbor, from the picture it looks like a LOT of work would have to be done to host a larger ship.
What industry is already there, if any? Typically towns form where either...
a) Life can be cheaply lived-- a bounty of easy free food, shelter, and most importantly fresh water.
This would draw a natural population. There's plenty of coastline in California too, undeveloped, mainly bc you can't get any fresh water without great effort, so the areas remain barren and unsettled.
b) A company has created jobs. Las Vega$ has nothing good about it, other than it was a gambling sanctuary-- in the middle of a desert no less, with zero nearby freshwater or even salt water. But the jobs were there, and so great effort was made to make it inhabitable.

There have been a LOT of utopias attempted in world history, and nearly 100% of them failed no matter how brilliant the founders. There are certain conditions that merit settlement for people.
But perhaps most easily said: Do YOU live in Noem? The #1 way to get people to settle an area, is to live there and THEN tell people how wonderful it is!