Saudi Arabia Expects Enterprise Tourism To Extra Than Double By 2030

This text is part of Bringing The World To Saudi, a particular report sponsored by Saudia and developed by Entrepreneur Center East in partnership with Lucidity Insights.

Enterprise tourism traditionally contributes 9% of tourism visits within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There have been 4 million tourism visits by enterprise vacationers to the Kingdom in 2018. The nation’s objective now could be to greater than double the variety of tourism visits carried out by enterprise vacationers and attain 10-11 million visits by 2030.

It’s a widespread sight to board a airplane departing Dubai on Sunday or Monday of every week to Riyadh or Jeddah, and be greeted by a airplane filled with consultants and enterprise vacationers. The aspiration of Imaginative and prescient 2030’s tourism targets close to most of these enterprise vacationers is twofold. First, they hope to extend the variety of enterprise vacationers to Saudi Arabia generally via an ever-growing financial system in addition to via a focused assembly, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) technique, making Saudi Arabia a hub for enterprise gatherings. Secondly, they hope to show many of those enterprise vacationers into basic leisure vacationers, and getting them to increase their keep within the Kingdom to benefit from the many tourism actions on supply.

Information particularly on the Kingdom’s enterprise tourism is proscribed, however previous to the launch of the nation’s Imaginative and prescient 2030, the Ministry of Tourism (which was, on the time, referred to as the Saudi Fee on Tourism and Antiquities) and the varied stakeholders concerned had assessed some baseline figures in 2016. In 2016, roughly 2.5 million enterprise vacationers flew into the nation from overseas, making up 77% of all enterprise vacationers within the Kingdom; the remaining 741,000 (23%) enterprise vacationers had been home enterprise women and men touring between cities inside the Kingdom.

These 3.24 million home and international businessmen and ladies spent US$2.29 billion within the Kingdom, accounting for 20% of whole tourism spend in 2016. 87% of enterprise tourism spend was from international enterprise vacationers, of which 71% resided in accommodations. For home enterprise vacationers, 70% resided in accommodations or furnished flats, and the bulk (61%), travelled by land in a automobile, reasonably than flying by air. In the identical yr, 680,000 outbound enterprise journeys had been logged by Saudi residents travelling exterior the Kingdom, spending roughly $960 million.

According to this anticipated progress, Saudi Arabia is creating accommodations at an unprecedented price. By the top of 2023, Saudi Arabia expects to have 30% extra resort rooms on-line than it had on the finish of 2021. The overwhelming majority of those resort rooms are in Makkah and Madinah, as soon as once more showcasing the strength of the religious tourism sector and its wants. Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam, as industrial facilities of the nation, are additionally rising, with the quickest progress in resort keys coming from the town of Jeddah inside the subsequent 24 months. With progress in tourism, comes progress in hospitality and F&B choices, and the economics of trickling right down to particular person restaurant homeowners, taxi drivers, tourism operators, and extra.

Associated: Revealed: Saudia’s Transformation To Turn into “The Wings” Of KSA’s Imaginative and prescient 2030