Saudi Arabia Tourism Industry

Tourism plays a pivotal role as an engine driving Saudi’s post-oil economy, serving as a key pillar of its 2030 Vision. And the Kingdom is well on track, having recently revised its target upward to 150m visitors by 2030. To learn more about this growing market, GLG’s Florian Guillot interviewed industry expert Ahmad Arab, the Founder and Chairman of the Board of the tourism and hospitality firm DRB Arabia. Previously, he was a deputy minister in charge of strategy and business intelligence at the Ministry of Tourism of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia revised its overall target to 150 million visitors by 2030, up from the initial 100 million. Would you say it’s as optimistic as this suggests and how do you see this panning out?

When the national tourism strategy was approved back in 2019, the target of visitation was around 100 million, like you said. The split itself was a little bit 50-50 between domestic and inbound. But what happened in light of COVID and what happened in the…