DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia aims to exceed 70 million vacationer visits this year after drawing 62 million final year, a tourism official mentioned on Monday, underlining the conservative kingdom concerted push to spice up its journey business.
Saudi Arabia is a serious non secular vacation spot with tens of millions visiting Islam’s two holy cities of Mecca and Medina yearly to carry out the hajj and umrah pilgrimages.
The kingdom has lately began to advertise leisure journey as a part of a technique aimed toward diversifying the economic system away from oil, spearheaded by de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Visits had been up 130% within the first quarter of 2022 in contrast with the final quarter of 2019, Saudi Tourism Authority CEO Fahd Hamidaddin instructed Reuters in an interview held on the sidelines of business occasion Arabian Travel Market held in Dubai.
“I believe our record-high home journey was final year. And on common restoration of whole journey, we outperformed the globe, we outperformed the area by way of restoration – we reached 72% of pre-pandemic ranges,” he mentioned.
“I’ll say this for the primary time…We are witnessing over 130% versus pre-pandemic ranges,” Hamidaddin mentioned, including this pertained to the leisure tourism phase solely and didn’t embrace non secular journey.
Saudi Arabia expects to open the doorways of a number of tourism-focused initiatives over the following few years, together with the Red Sea venture, a high-end improvement that may characteristic resorts on islands and inland.
“We’re very happy to see Dubai profitable, identical to Jordan, identical to Egypt, all recovering and rising. And we need to play our function – and we consider that our success is success for everybody,” Hamidaddin mentioned, addressing a query about regional competitors.
(Reporting by Yousef Saba; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
