Vision 2030 Special Report · March 2026 · RoamSaudi Editorial Team
Just six years ago, leisure tourism in Saudi Arabia was almost nonexistent. Today, the Kingdom is the fastest-growing travel destination on Earth — and the numbers tell a story of transformation that would have seemed implausible a decade ago.
When Saudi Arabia opened its doors to international leisure visitors in September 2019 with the launch of its electronic visa program, few could have anticipated the speed and scale of what followed. A global pandemic, a cultural revolution, and hundreds of billions of dollars in investment later, the Kingdom has rewritten what it means to be a tourism destination — not just in the Middle East, but in the world.
The most recent data, presented by Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khateeb at the World Economic Forum in January 2026, confirmed that Saudi Arabia welcomed over 122 million domestic and international visitors in 2025 — a 5 percent increase over an already record-breaking 2024. Total tourism spending reached approximately SAR 300 billion (around $81 billion), up 6 percent year-on-year. These are not the numbers of a nation finding its footing in travel. These are the numbers of a global power.
Rewriting the Target, Rewriting History
The original ambition of Vision 2030 was to attract 100 million tourists by the end of the decade. Saudi Arabia hit that milestone in 2023 — six years early. The target was promptly revised upward: 150 million annual visitors by 2030, comprising 70 million international tourists and 80 million domestic travelers.
For context, this would place Saudi Arabia comfortably among the ten most-visited countries on earth. It would also, according to the Ministry of Tourism, bring tourism's contribution to GDP from 5 percent today to 10 percent — doubling a sector's share in under five years. The UN World Tourism Organization reported in May 2025 that Saudi Arabia led the world in growth of international tourism revenues and ranked third globally for growth in visitor arrivals.
Saudi Arabia also led G20 countries with a 69 percent growth rate in international tourist numbers compared to 2019 — the highest of any major economy.
Beyond Mecca: A Nation Discovering Its Full Story
For much of its modern history, Saudi Arabia's tourism identity was inseparable from its religious one. Millions came for Hajj and Umrah; almost no one came for anything else. In 2019, pilgrimage visitors accounted for 66 percent of all arrivals. By 2025, that proportion has fallen to roughly 44 percent — even as the absolute number of pilgrims has grown significantly — because leisure, entertainment, and cultural tourism have expanded so dramatically.
Visitors traveling specifically for events, seasons, and entertainment grew fivefold between 2019 and 2024, rising from 1.2 million to 6.5 million. Riyadh Season alone has become a global entertainment brand, drawing international audiences for boxing championships, Formula E racing, and headline concerts. The Kingdom has hosted the Esports World Cup, the AFC Asian Cup, and secured the FIFA World Cup for 2034 — by which time Saudi Arabia will need an estimated 185,000 additional hotel rooms just for that single tournament.
The tourist visa itself is now one of the most frictionless in the region. Citizens from 66 countries can obtain one online in under five minutes — a policy shift that, in just a few years, has changed the conversation about the Kingdom entirely.
"Saudi tourism is no longer an emerging story. It is a growth engine, building investor confidence, shaping global demand, and unlocking long-term opportunity at scale." — Ahmed Al-Khateeb, Minister of Tourism, World Economic Forum 2026
A Landscape of Destinations
Perhaps the most strategically sophisticated element of Saudi Arabia's tourism vision is its deliberate decentralization. Rather than funnelling visitors into one or two gateway cities, the Kingdom is building a network of distinct, world-class destinations — each with its own character and its own draw.
🏛️ Diriyah
The $64 billion birthplace of the Saudi state, centred on the UNESCO World Heritage site of At-Turaif. Targeting 25 million annual visitors, with 35 luxury hotels, traditional souqs, and museums planned around the mud-brick citadel.
🌊 The Red Sea
A $25 billion archipelago of ultra-luxury island resorts being built to rival the Maldives and the Caribbean. The Red Sea Project targets 50 resorts across 22 islands, including the Coral Bloom and Amaala developments.
🗿 AlUla
A magnificent ancient landscape of Nabataean tombs, rock formations, and desert canyons. Recently recognised among the world's top tourism destinations by the United Nations. Luxury camps and heritage experiences are already open.
🏔️ Asir & the Green Mountains
Saudi Arabia's cool, lush southern highlands — a revelation for visitors who expected only desert. A rapidly growing summer destination offering trekking, fresh mountain air, and cloud-kissed villages unlike anywhere else in the Kingdom.
Then there is NEOM. — a $500 billion giga-project in the northwest of the Kingdom that defies easy categorization. Its various components include Trojena, a mountain ski and adventure resort; Sindalah, a superyacht island destination; and several other districts being designed from scratch as cities of the future. NEOM is planned to host matches during the 2034 FIFA World Cup, placing it firmly in the global travel imagination long before its completion.
The Infrastructure to Match the Vision
Ambitions of this scale require infrastructure to match. Saudi Arabia is building it — fast.
The new King Salman International Airport in Riyadh is designed to handle 120 million passengers annually, making it among the largest aviation facilities in the world upon completion. Riyadh's metro system — with 85 stations across a 176-kilometre network — opened in November 2024 and immediately broke the Guinness World Record as the longest driverless train network on Earth.
In the air, Riyadh Air — the Kingdom's new national carrier — launched its first flights in 2025, with plans to connect Riyadh to more than 100 destinations. Delta Air Lines announced the first-ever direct non-stop flights between the United States and Saudi Arabia, beginning between Atlanta and Riyadh in October 2026. Through the Air Connectivity Program, Saudi Arabia has added over 60 new direct routes in the past two years and is targeting connectivity to 250 global destinations by 2030, up from around 180 today.
The hotel pipeline is equally staggering. Over 25 hotels and resorts are expected to open in Saudi Arabia in 2026 alone. By 2030, the Kingdom aims to offer over 500,000 hotel rooms — a figure that includes major expansions from Hilton, Marriott, Accor, and dozens of boutique and ultra-luxury brands being introduced to the Saudi market for the first time.
Two Catalysts on the Horizon
If the 2020s have been the setup, the 2030s look set to be the crescendo. Two events above all others are shaping the Kingdom's strategic horizon.
30–40 Million Additional Visitors
Saudi Arabia won the Expo 2030 bid over South Korea and Italy by a landslide. The six-month world exposition in Riyadh is expected to attract between 30 and 40 million visitors. Preparations have concentrated massive investment on Riyadh's infrastructure; the capital's population is forecast to reach 9.2 million by 2030.
The First 48-Team Solo-Hosted Tournament
The 2034 World Cup will be spread across five Saudi cities, with 11 new stadiums announced and a hospitality expansion requiring 185,000 additional hotel rooms. Qatar's 2022 tournament brought 1.4 million visitors and an estimated $17 billion in tourism revenue. Saudi Arabia, with larger geography and more developed infrastructure, is targeting outcomes considerably beyond that.
Together, these two events represent something more than just temporary surges in visitor numbers. They are milestones in a broader journey — points of inflection designed to accelerate a permanent shift in how the world perceives and interacts with the Kingdom.
Sustainability and the Soul of Saudi Hospitality
Rapid growth at this scale carries risks — environmental, cultural, and logistical. Saudi Arabia has made notable efforts to address them proactively. The Global Tourism Sustainability Center was recently launched to conduct research, arrange funding, and ensure that major coastal and mountain developments protect, rather than exploit, the natural environments they inhabit. Both Expo 2030 and the FIFA World Cup 2034 have sustainability embedded in their planning, with renewable energy sources and eco-friendly transport integrated from the design stage.
Technology plays an increasingly central role in the visitor experience. The Ministry of Tourism has articulated a philosophy of "digitalise the unnecessary and humanise the necessary" — using artificial intelligence and airport biometrics to eliminate friction in immigration and logistics, while preserving the irreducibly human elements that make travel meaningful. AI assistants like Nora will handle routine inquiries; Saudi guides and hospitality professionals will handle the rest.
That human dimension — the warmth, the generosity, the pride of sharing one's culture — is something Saudi Arabia's tourism leadership returns to again and again. The coffee, the dates, the quiet dignity of the desert, the hospitality of a family in an Asir village — these are things no giga-project can manufacture, and no competitor can replicate.
"We have a lot to offer to the world — Saudi hospitality, our coffee and food, our Arabian culture." — H.E. Ahmed Al-Khateeb, Minister of Tourism, Fortune Global Forum, October 2025
Looking Ahead
The story of Saudi tourism is, in the end, a story about identity as much as economics. A nation that spent decades defining itself almost entirely through its oil wealth and its sacred cities is in the process of discovering — and sharing — the full complexity of what it is and what it has to offer.
The numbers will keep growing. The airports will expand, the hotels will fill, the giga-projects will open their gates. But the most profound transformation happening in Saudi Arabia may be the one that is hardest to quantify: the slow, irreversible opening of a conversation between this ancient civilization and the curious travellers who are only now beginning to arrive.
For those who come early, there has never been a better time. The Kingdom is ready, welcoming, and just getting started.