Saudi Arabia receives 60M tourists in H1 2024: Al-Khatib

Saudi Arabia received 60 million tourists in the first half of 2024, whose spending reached about SAR 150 billion, with growth of 10% compared to the same period last year, said Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khatib.

Tourism income accounted for 5% of the Kingdom’s economy in H1 2024, Al-Khatib added, during a government press conference held today in Abha city.

The total number of tourists reached 109.3 million in 2023, with domestic and inbound tourists amounting to 81.9 million and 27.4 million, respectively.

Total tourism spending reached SAR 255.6 billion in 2023, of which domestic and inbound tourists dominated SAR 114.4 billion and SAR 141.2 billion, respectively.

"We are moving at a steady pace to achieve the target of raising the tourism sector’s contribution to the gross domestic product to 10% or about SAR 600 -700 billion by 2030," the minister said.

He stressed that the Kingdom has an attractive diverse terrain and robust human potential in multiple sectors to achieve Vision 2030 goals, pointing out that 100,000 Saudis were trained during the past year, 1,500 of whom held leadership positions.

Al-Khatib also said the tourism sector’s contribution to non-oil GDP reached 35% in 2023.

He added that the number of visitors to Aseer reached eight million visitors in 2023, noting that as many as 10 projects were financed in Aseer with SAR 1 billion.

Additionally, the minister pointed to the launch of the College of Tourism at King Khalid University today to provide training programs in cooperation with the best international training institutes.