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Middle East Tourism: Roundup From the First Half of 2024
09.08.2024 - 16:09 / skift.com / Josh Corder
This earnings season, global travel leaders have agreed that the industry is in a slowdown. An exception to that, however, has been the Middle East, which bosses like Accor’s Sebastien Bazin noted was the operator’s best-performing region in the second quarter.
Mounting regional tensions could undo the Middle East’s growth in travel, but for the first half of 2024, performance was strong.
Here’s a look at the half-year tourism numbers for some of the region’s biggest tourism destinations.
Saudi Arabia saw a combined 60 million international and domestic tourists in the first six months of the year. The kingdom did not share the split between international and domestic numbers.
Tourists in the period contributed $38.1 billion in expenditure during the first half of 2024.
Closed off to international tourism up until 2019, Saudi Arabia targets 150 million tourists by the end of the decade, 70 million of those coming from overseas. The country also wants tourism to become its second largest industry behind oil.
Dubai continued its upward trajectory in tourism, recording 9.31 million international overnight visitors from January to June 2024. This marks a 9% increase compared to the 8.55 million arrivals in the same period in 2023, according to data from the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET).
Visitor statistics breakdown:
Qatar saw 2.63 million international tourists in the first half of 2024, 28% higher than the same period in 2023.
Saudi Arabia continued to be the top contributor to international arrivals with 755,000 visitors – 29% of total visitors coming in by June of 2024.
The remaining top 10 visitor markets were India (8%), Bahrain (5%), UK (4%), Kuwait (4%), Oman (4%), Germany (4%), USA (3%), UAE (3%), Italy (2%).
Egypt brought in 7.069 million tourists in the first half of 2024, surpassing the previous record of 7.062 million set in the same period of 2023.
Key figures:
Turkey had a 13.9% annual increase in visitor numbers, reaching 26.1 million in the first half of 2024. Tourism revenues during the same period rose by 9.3% to $23.7 billion.
Key figures:
Turkey remains committed to its ambitious year-end target of 60 million visitors and $60 billion in tourism revenues.
The website maxtravelz.com is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
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