Saudi Arabia has managed to make great leaps in the tourism sector, as it ranked 33 globally in the Travel and Tourism Index issued by the World Economic Forum, advancing 10 countries at once compared to 2019.
According to the index, the improvement included all five main axes in addition to 12 sub-axes, and thus the Kingdom became the second highest country in the Middle East and North Africa within the index, and it also came among the top 10 countries in three of the axes. Saudi Arabia ranked first in terms of demand pressure and the extent of its impact on the sector and its quality on the economy, and ranked ninth globally in the level of priority for travel and tourism. This axis measures the extent to which the field is given priority at the local level by the public and private sectors, as well as occupied the tenth place in the business environment, which measures the extent to which national policies support doing business.
The Kingdom worked on translating the strategy of developing national tourism, developing tourist destinations, attracting the best international hotels, building a distinguished experience for visitors, achieving the goals of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030, and achieving a growth of 34% in the number of local tourist trips compared to 2019. This progress comes as a result of the serious steps taken by Saudi Arabia to invest in the tourism sector, in parallel with providing facilities for doing business and investing in cooperation with all government sectors, including the National Competitiveness Center and the General Authority for Statistics.
Source (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
