Domestic tourism on the rise

There was a massive increase in the number of tourist trips made within the Kingdom in 2013 thanks to the extensive revamp given to the country’s tourism infrastructure.
According to the Tourism Information and Research Center (MAS), the statistical arm of Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA), the number of domestic tourism trips rose from 19 million in 2012 to 23.8 million in 2013, an increase of 4.8 million.
Domestic tourism has pushed up local tourist spending to SR28 billion, said MAS.
An SCTA official on Wednesday said that spending on accommodation accounts for more than 25 percent of tourism spending, followed by shopping, food, beverages and restaurants, which came third, transport, and entertainment and recreation, which ranked fifth.
“There were more than 203,000 Saudis working in the tourism sector in 2013, accounting for more than 27 percent of the total number of Saudis employed in permanent work,” he said. “Tourism is a main creator of jobs and a huge economy booster.”
“There are currently more than 1.1 million people employed in this lucrative sector and the number of Saudis employed in tourism and hospitality is expected to exceed the 1.7 million mark by 2020,” said the official.
A report released by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) lauded the tourism sector’s ability to provide a record number of permanent and seasonal jobs, as well as create employment in sub-sectors.
A recently released report by MAS also revealed that tourism contributed a staggering SR75 billion to the Kingdom’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), accounting for nearly three percent of the total.
According to the report, there was a 64-percent hotel occupancy rate and a more than 58 percent occupancy rate for furnished apartments in 2012.
There are more than 3,710 tourist accommodation facilities, around a third of which are hotels.
There are almost 300,000 hotels rooms and 87,000 furnished apartments in the Kingdom, said the report.
Around 77 percent of hotel investments in the Kingdom are based in Makkah and Madinah.