International Visitors to Saudi Arabia Fell 13%. Domestic Trips Hid It.

Two numbers, moving in opposite directions. Saudi Arabia’s inbound international visitors fell 13% to 8.3 million in the first quarter of 2026. Domestic trips rose 16% to 28.9 million. Add them together and you get 37.2 million visitors, up 8% — which is the figure the Ministry of Tourism published on 8 April 2026, the figure the wires carried, and the figure that has anchored every subsequent account of Saudi Arabia’s tourism numbers for 2026 [S1].

The inbound decline sits inside the same data. It was not disclosed in the April release as reported by Arab News, which recorded the domestic count, the combined total, the spending total and hotel occupancy, but no inbound figure at all [S1]. The inbound number reached the public two months later, in a June market report by the consultancy Cavendish Maxwell that separated the series and reported the 13% fall against 8.3 million arrivals [S2][S3]. The ministry’s own dashboards were not retrievable for this article; the figures below come from the outlets that read the releases, each attributed.

The two series are not interchangeable. Domestic trips are counted by no international standard and cannot be set against another country’s arrivals data. Inbound arrivals can be, and are what places Saudi Arabia in global rankings. The combined total is the aggregation that hides the fall — and, as the figure-conflict section below shows, it is also the source of the second decline percentage now circulating.

Last verified: 31 July 2026.

How many tourists visited Saudi Arabia in 2026?

37.2 million people made a tourism trip in the Kingdom between January and March 2026. Of those, 8.3 million came from abroad and 28.9 million were residents travelling domestically. Here are the two series, separated.

Domestic, combined and spending figures are from the Ministry of Tourism release of 8 April 2026 [S1]; the inbound arrivals figure and the inbound spending change are from Cavendish Maxwell’s June market report [S2][S3]. The two international-spending percentages differ by outlet — 7% in one write-up of the same report, 8% in another — with SAR48bn common to both. Spend-per-visitor figures are calculated here from the published totals.

The three published growth rates are internally consistent, which is a useful check: working backwards, Q1 2025 was approximately 9.5 million inbound and 24.9 million domestic, and those reconcile to the implied combined 34.4 million. These reconstructed 2025 figures are derived, not published.

Two further calculations follow from those figures, and they point in opposite directions.

The first cuts against alarmism. International visitors were 22% of the count but 58% of the spending, and spend per inbound visitor rose roughly 6% year on year even as arrivals fell 13%. Fewer people came, and those who came spent more. That is not the signature of a collapsing destination.

The second cuts the other way, and appears to have gone unreported. The SAR82.7bn spending total was published without a year-on-year comparison [S1]. Reconstruct one from the two component changes — inbound down 7% to 8%, domestic up 8% — and Q1 2025 spending comes to roughly SAR84bn. Total tourism spending in Q1 2026 therefore fell about 1% to 2%, even as the combined visitor count rose 8%, because 13% fewer international visitors were replaced by domestic trips worth about a fifth as much each. Combined spend per visitor fell around 9%, from roughly SAR2,440 to SAR2,220. This is a derived figure, not a published one, and it depends on which of the two reported inbound-spending percentages is used; it is negative under both.

Is Saudi tourism growing or declining?

Both, and the divergence started before the war. This is the part of the story the quarterly framing obscures, and it is why Saudi Arabia’s tourism numbers for 2026 cannot be read without the 2025 series behind them: inbound arrivals turned negative in 2025, a full year before the regional conflict, while domestic trips carried on rising.

The 2019 figure is from the OECD’s Tourism Trends and Policies 2026, published 28 July 2026, which records Saudi inbound growth from 17.5 million in 2019 to 29.3 million in 2025 — a 67% increase and the highest growth rate among the OECD members and partner economies studied [S10]. The 2024 and 2025 rows are the Ministry of Tourism’s respective Annual Statistical Reports [S13][S5][S14]. The 2023 total is Al-Khateeb’s own characterisation at the time — “about 100 million” — with the foreign component put at over 27 million by Carnegie’s reading of ministry data [S11][S6].

Read down the inbound column and the shape is clear: +8% in 2024, −1.6% in 2025, −13% in the first quarter of 2026. Read down the domestic column and there is no interruption at all: +5%, +8.3%, +16%. The gap widened sharply under the conflict, but it opened in 2025 under normal conditions.

Spending tells the more flattering version. Total tourism spending reached SAR303.7bn ($81.0bn) in 2025, up 7.0%, of which inbound accounted for SAR176.6bn ($47.1bn), up 4.8%, and domestic SAR127.1bn ($33.9bn), up 10.2% [S5]. Inbound receipts grew while inbound arrivals fell. The Ministry of Tourism is entitled to present that as progress. It is not entitled to present the combined visitor count as evidence that international demand is intact.

What Saudi Arabia’s tourism numbers for 2026 actually count

No tourism claim about Saudi Arabia can be evaluated without knowing which series it comes from, and the published discussion almost never says. Four institutions publish something that could be quoted as a Saudi Arabia tourism number for 2026, and they do not agree with each other on level or direction.

The row that should stop a reader is the fourth. The Ministry of Tourism says inbound arrivals fell 1.6% in 2025, to 29.3 million. The Saudi Central Bank series carried by Trading Economics says arrivals rose to 30.0 million from 29.7 million in 2024 [S16]. Two official Saudi series disagree on the sign of the change in the same year. Neither publisher has issued a reconciliation. Anyone quoting “30 million” for 2025 is using one series; anyone quoting a decline is using the other.

Three further definitional points carry real weight.

The headline aggregates two different units. “Visitors” in the 122.6 million and 37.2 million figures is inbound people-visits added to domestic trips. A resident taking four weekend breaks contributes four. No other major destination builds a headline tourism number this way, which is why 122.6 million cannot be set beside France’s or Spain’s arrivals — the comparable Saudi figure is 29.3 million.

The inbound series is overnight-based, at least for purpose classification. The ministry’s 2025 report describes non-religious travel as reaching 52% of “inbound overnight visitors,” against 44% in 2019 [S14]. How same-day international visitors are handled in the headline arrivals figure is not published in English alongside it, and we could not verify it.

Hotel data is a fourth, independent universe. STR and consultancy samples measure rooms, not people, and cover only surveyed stock. The ministry reported average Q1 2026 occupancy of 59%, with Madinah at 82% and Makkah at 60% [S1]; Knight Frank’s Jan–Apr sample puts national occupancy at 63.4% and Madinah at 76% [S9]; Cavendish Maxwell’s STR data puts Makkah near 73% year-to-date through May [S2]. Different samples over different windows — quoted interchangeably, and they should not be.

Which figure is right — a 13% fall or a 6% one?

Both. They measure different things over different periods, and confusing them is the single most common error in the current coverage.

The minister’s words are on the record and unambiguous. Speaking at the FII Priority Europe summit in Rome on 18 June 2026, Tourism Minister Ahmed Al-Khateeb said the Kingdom had “experienced strong Ramadan and strong Hajj pilgrimage, finish(ing) the five months with a good performance, slightly less than (the) same period last year, down by about 5 percent to 6 percent — which is a great success” [S4]. He was describing the whole sector over five months, not inbound arrivals over three.

A precise 6.2% figure has since attached itself to Saudi inbound arrivals in secondary aggregator coverage. It does not correspond to anything published by the Ministry of Tourism, GASTAT, the Saudi Central Bank, UN Tourism or the OECD, and the aggregator carrying it uses 13.1% for the Q1 inbound fall in its own body text. The most defensible reading is that the 6.2% is a spurious-precision rendering of the minister’s “about 5 percent to 6 percent” range — a number describing the combined series, restated as though it described the inbound one. Do not use it.

The resolution is the article’s thesis in miniature: the two decline figures in circulation are the two series this piece separates. The smaller number is smaller precisely because it includes the domestic trips that rose 16%. There is no third estimate to adjudicate between — there is one falling series and one aggregate that contains it.

A second, milder confusion follows the same pattern. Because Cavendish Maxwell’s June report combined Ministry of Tourism arrivals data for January–March with STR hotel data for January–May, several outlets labelled the 8.3 million and 28.9 million figures as “January to May.” They are not. The ministry published the 28.9 million domestic figure and the 37.2 million combined total on 8 April 2026 [S1] — a release issued in early April cannot cover May. The arrivals data is Q1; only the hotel data runs to May.

Why did international visits to Saudi Arabia fall?

Regional conflict, and the regional comparison settles it. UN Tourism’s World Tourism Barometer recorded international arrivals across the entire Middle East down 14% in the first quarter of 2026, against global growth of 2% to 307 million. Europe rose 4%, Asia-Pacific 3%, the Americas 2%. UN Tourism attributed the Middle East result directly to the conflict, noting that global growth held at 2.5% across January and February before collapsing to 0.4% in March, and cut its 2026 forecast by one to two percentage points from an initial 3% to 4% [S8].

Saudi Arabia’s inbound fall of 13% was therefore shallower than the regional aggregate of 14%. That single comparison does most of the analytical work. If a destination declines by less than the region it sits in, during a shock that hit the region’s airspace and airlines, there is no residual to explain with a country-specific story. Whatever structural weaknesses Saudi inbound tourism has — and the 2025 decline suggests there are some — they are not what produced the Q1 2026 number.

The transmission mechanism is documented and mundane: carriers suspended services, airspace was rerouted, long-haul bookings were deferred. Red Sea Global chief executive John Pagano described the effect precisely: “The uncertainty around the situation caused them to postpone their visit, but it created an opportunity for more domestic visitors to come” [S15]. Postponement, not cancellation of intent. Diriyah chief executive Jerry Inzerillo said of the same period: “We didn’t lose a day of occupancy” [S15]. Both are interested parties, but the hotel data broadly supports them.

Two qualifications belong here. The first is scale: 8.3 million inbound visitors in a single quarter is still 28% of the entire 2025 inbound total and 47% of everything the Kingdom received in the whole of 2019. The 13% fall gave back roughly a year of growth; it did not reverse the programme. The second is that none of this explains 2025, when inbound arrivals fell 1.6% before the conflict, while aviation capacity and hotel supply were both expanding. That is the number that should worry planners, and it drew almost no attention because the combined total rose 5.8% in the same year.

Our assessment: the conflict accounts for the overwhelming majority of the Q1 2026 inbound fall — on the regional-comparison evidence, effectively all of it. The structural question lives in the 2025 data, not the 2026 data. For the wider economic transmission of the conflict, see the Iran war fragility analysis.

Where the decline landed: Riyadh, not Makkah

The hotel data localises the damage, and the pattern is the most revealing evidence in the whole dataset. Knight Frank’s Saudi Arabia Hospitality Market Review 2026, published 21 June 2026, covering January to April [S9]:

Riyadh — the market most exposed to long-haul business and discretionary leisure travel, and to the international sports calendar PIF spent 2026 trimming — lost nearly a fifth of its occupancy and revenue per available room. Makkah and Madinah grew. The STR series in Cavendish Maxwell’s report points the same way over a longer window: national ADR up 12% to SAR825 year-to-date through May, with Makkah ADR up 24% to SAR918, Madinah up 5.7% to SAR878, and Makkah occupancy up 12% year on year [S2].

The composition of the shock is therefore precise. International discretionary travel to the capital stopped; religious travel to the two holy cities did not. That is what “domestic trips hid it” understates — it was not only domestic trips. It was also Umrah. Market-level demand is covered in our Riyadh, Jeddah and Makkah hotel demand analysis.

Does Saudi Arabia count Umrah pilgrims as tourists?

Yes — and it is entitled to. The counter-argument must be stated first and fairly, because it is correct: under UN Tourism’s international standards, religion and pilgrimage are an explicit purpose category for tourism travel. A pilgrim who crosses a border and stays overnight is an international tourist by definition, in Saudi Arabia exactly as in Italy or India. Counting Umrah performers as tourists is not a trick, and any critique that treats it as one is wrong.

The issue is comparability and disclosure — and on that, the Kingdom’s own numbers do not sit still.

Andrew Leber, a nonresident scholar in the Carnegie Middle East Program, set out the problem in Vision 2030 in the Home Stretch: Clear Achievements yet Limited Accountability, published 10 March 2025. He noted that “just 12 percent of visits in 2023 were recorded as being made for ‘religious’ reasons, compared with 42 percent recorded as ’leisure’ travel” — a classification that Saudi officials and the IMF had used to credit the expansion to non-religious travel. Against that, he set the ministry’s own geography: “MOT numbers indicate that much of the increase in international overnight stays (60 percent, or over 6 million) and spending (over 80 percent, or nearly $11 billion) took place in the city of Mecca” [S6].

Sixty per cent of the growth in overnight stays and over 80% of the growth in spending occurred in a city that non-Muslims may not enter. Leber also cites the acknowledgement that does most of the damage to the leisure-tourism reading — and it belongs to the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, not the tourism ministry, which is worth stating precisely because the quotation is often misattributed: the ministry notes that “the tourist visa is preferred for beneficiaries wishing to perform Umrah” [S6]. Visa type does not indicate purpose. A pilgrim entering on a tourist visa is a tourist-visa entrant by administration and a pilgrim by intent.

Here is the finding that has not been reported. The Ministry of Tourism’s own 2025 Annual Statistical Report classifies 48.3% of inbound tourists as travelling for religious reasons, against 24.1% for leisure, 14.9% visiting friends and relatives, and 7.7% for business [S7]. The ministry frames the same data as non-religious purposes reaching 52% of inbound overnight visitors in 2025, up from 44% in 2019 [S14].

Set the two published series side by side.

A religious share of 56% in 2019 and 48.3% in 2025 describes a gentle, plausible drift. Twelve per cent in 2023 sits nowhere on that line. The two cannot both describe the same universe on the same basis, and the ministry has published no reconciliation, restatement note or methodological change log that would explain the gap. Either the 2023 classification counted something narrower than the 2025 one, or one of the figures is wrong.

That is the disclosure failure — not the counting of pilgrims, which is legitimate, but the absence of a stable, documented classification that lets a reader track religious and non-religious travel over time. It matters commercially as well as statistically. A destination where roughly half of inbound visitors are pilgrims has a different seasonality, length of stay, geographic concentration and capacity constraint from a leisure destination of the same size. The Q1 2026 hotel data demonstrates it: when discretionary international travel stopped, the pilgrimage cities kept growing, and Al-Khateeb said plainly that the Kingdom had hedged the war’s impact through religious travel [S4]. Hajj 2026 drew 1.71 million pilgrims, up 2.2%, about 1.55 million of them from abroad [S9] — growth in the same quarter that general inbound arrivals fell 13%.

For the standing profile of the segment, see religious tourism in Saudi Arabia, the Hajj 2026 numbers and the foreign Umrah pilgrims KPI tracker.

What is Saudi Arabia’s 150 million visitor target?

A target for total tourism trips by 2030 — inbound arrivals plus domestic trips — announced by Ahmed Al-Khateeb at the Future Investment Initiative on 24 October 2023, after the original 100 million goal was reached seven years ahead of schedule. “I think we will close this year with about 100 million (visitors) and almost 6 percent of contribution to gross domestic product, that’s why his royal highness instructed us to revise up our targets to 150 (million visitors),” he said [S11].

The international sub-target has been stated two ways by the same minister within a month. At FII in October 2023 the 150 million was described as 75 million international and 75 million domestic [S11]. In September 2023 Al-Khateeb had put the international goal at 70 million a year by 2030 [S12] — the figure Carnegie also records the ministry as adopting [S6]. Both remain in circulation.

The arithmetic shows that only one half of the target is still live.

The domestic component was met in 2025 and is running 13 to 18 million trips ahead of target. Everything still outstanding is international — and international is the series that fell 1.6% in 2025 and 13% in Q1 2026. Reaching 70 million inbound arrivals from 29.3 million requires sustained compound growth of 19.0% a year for five years; reaching 75 million requires 20.7%. Those rates are demanded of a base that is currently declining.

This article does not assess whether the 150 million target is achievable. That question is owned by our standing analysis, is 100 million tourists by 2030 realistic?, covering infrastructure capacity, hotel supply, visa policy and the competitive set. This piece covers what the feasibility analysis does not: the Q1 2026 arrivals decline and the separation of the two series. Progress against the headline is tracked at the tourism priority tracker and the 100 million visitor gap tracker.

Why this matters for Vision 2030

Tourism is one of the few Vision 2030 pillars with a genuine, verifiable, world-leading achievement behind it. Inbound arrivals rose 67% between 2019 and 2025, the fastest growth of any economy in the OECD’s 2026 study [S10]. The tourist visa did not exist in 2018. That record is real and this analysis does not dispute it.

The problem is what the headline metric now measures. A target expressed in combined trips can be satisfied by domestic travel — the component the government most directly influences, through public holidays, events, entertainment programming and internal transport, and the one with the weakest economic case. Domestic visitors spent about SAR1,200 ($320) per trip in Q1 2026 against roughly SAR5,780 ($1,540) for international ones. Domestic tourism substantially recycles money already inside the economy; inbound tourism imports it, which is the whole point of counting tourism as a diversification instrument.

So the aggregate can rise while the diversification objective weakens. That is what happened in 2025 — combined trips up 5.8%, inbound arrivals down 1.6% — and again, more sharply, in Q1 2026. A metric that cannot distinguish between those two outcomes cannot function as a management indicator, and the capital allocated against it in Red Sea and Diriyah hospitality inventory is being sized against the wrong series. Knight Frank counts 105,225 rooms under construction or in advanced planning, taking projected inventory above 281,500 by 2030, with about 218,000 rooms, branded residences and serviced apartments planned for Makkah and Madinah alone [S9]. Rooms built for international demand are not filled by weekend trips from Riyadh.

Risks, contradictions and open questions

The two official arrivals series still disagree. The Ministry of Tourism reports 29.3 million inbound in 2025 and a 1.6% fall; the Saudi Central Bank series reports 30.0 million and a 1% rise [S5][S16]. Until one is reconciled to the other, every Saudi arrivals claim requires a series label.

The religious-share discontinuity is unexplained. Twelve per cent in 2023 [S6] cannot be reconciled with 48.3% in 2025 [S7] or with 44% non-religious in 2019 [S14] under a stable classification. We do not know which figure changed, or why.

No consistent quarterly inbound series is published in English. The ministry releases quarterly domestic and combined figures but not, consistently, quarterly inbound ones, so the four-to-eight quarter chart the data ought to support cannot be built and Q1 2025 inbound had to be reconstructed arithmetically. That gap is the mechanism by which the decline stayed invisible for two months.

The same-day visitor treatment is unverified. We could not establish from English-language sources how same-day international visitors are handled in the headline inbound figure, or how domestic “trips” are defined against same-day travel. Both materially affect the 150 million target’s meaning.

Q2 2026 could break either way. Hajj fell inside Q2 and was strong [S9], and Al-Khateeb’s “5 to 6 percent” over five months implies a materially better April and May than the first quarter [S4]. Whether inbound arrivals recovered or merely stopped falling is not yet published.

Interested parties dominate the qualitative record. The most quotable reassurances come from the chief executives of Red Sea Global and Diriyah, both with hospitality inventory to fill [S15]. Their claims are plausible and broadly consistent with the hotel data, but they are not independent.

What to watch next

The Q2 2026 Ministry of Tourism release, expected early October 2026. The test: does it publish an inbound arrivals figure alongside the domestic and combined totals? The April release, as reported, did not [S1]. An inbound number in the release rather than in a consultancy report two months later would be a genuine disclosure improvement.

The 2026 Annual Statistical Report, due around June 2027. Watch the purpose-of-visit table. A third religious-share figure inconsistent with both 12% and 48.3% would confirm that the classification is unstable rather than the travel pattern.

UN Tourism’s next World Tourism Barometer. The Middle East regional figure is the correct control for any Saudi-specific claim. If the region recovers and Saudi Arabia does not, the structural argument becomes available; until then it does not [S8].

Riyadh hotel occupancy through H2 2026. At 49.3% for January to April, down 17.9% year on year [S9], Riyadh is the cleanest single proxy for international discretionary demand, and it will move before the arrivals data does.

Any restatement of the 70 million versus 75 million sub-target. With the domestic component already exceeded, the international figure is the only operative number left in the 150 million target, and it has never been stated consistently [S11][S12].

Related Vision 2030 context

• Is 100 million tourists by 2030 realistic? — the standing feasibility analysis of the visitor target, infrastructure capacity and competitive positioning
• Saudi Vision 2030 tourism goals — the full target architecture, GDP share and employment objectives
• Tourism in Saudi Arabia 2025 — the annual reference page on visitors, hotels and growth
• Ministry of Tourism — the institution that publishes the headline series
• Religious tourism: Hajj, Umrah and 2030 capacity — the segment that held up through the conflict quarter
• Umrah explained and Hajj 2026 by the numbers — the pilgrimage baseline
• Foreign Umrah pilgrims KPI tracker and the 30 million Umrah gap — running progress on the religious-tourism targets
• Leisure tourism in Saudi Arabia — the non-religious segment the classification dispute concerns
• Saudi tourism visa guide — the visa instrument at the centre of the Umrah counting question
• Riyadh, Jeddah and Makkah hotel demand — city-level occupancy and pipeline
• Red Sea and Diriyah — the giga-project hospitality inventory sized against inbound demand
• Tourism priority tracker and the 100 million visitor gap — the running scorecard
• GCC tourism benchmark — how the Kingdom compares with regional competitors
• GASTAT — how Saudi Arabia’s statistical system works and what it publishes
• Iran war fragility — the wider economic transmission of the conflict
• Aviation sector — the capacity constraint behind inbound arrivals

Sources

• [S1] Arab News, Saudi Domestic Tourism Rises 16% in Q1 2026: Ministry, news report on the Ministry of Tourism release, 8 April 2026. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2639192
• [S2] Connecting Travel, Saudi Tourism Spending Hits US$22bn in Q1 2026, news report on the Cavendish Maxwell market review, 24 June 2026. https://connectingtravel.com/news/saudi-tourism-spending-hits-us22bn-in-q1-2026
• [S3] Consultancy-me.com, Saudi Arabia Sees Dip in International Tourism but Domestic Travel Offsets Slowdown, news report, 30 June 2026. https://www.consultancy-me.com/news/13794/saudi-arabia-sees-dip-in-international-tourism-but-domestic-travel-offsets-slowdown
• [S4] Arab News, Strong Ramadan and Hajj Results Eased Impact of Iran War, Saudi Tourism Minister Says, report from the FII Priority Europe summit in Rome, 18 June 2026. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2647758
• [S5] Argaam, Saudi Arabia Sees 122.6M Tourist Arrivals in 2025; Spending Rises to SAR 303.7B, news report on the Ministry of Tourism 2025 Annual Statistical Report, 20 June 2026. https://www.argaam.com/en/article/articledetail/id/1913838
• [S6] Andrew Leber, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Vision 2030 in the Home Stretch: Clear Achievements yet Limited Accountability, research paper, 10 March 2025. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/03/vision-2030-in-the-home-stretch-clear-achievements-yet-limited-accountability
• [S7] DataSaudi (Ministry of Economy and Planning), Tourism, sector data portal, retrieved 31 July 2026. https://datasaudi.sa/en/sector/tourism
• [S8] UN Tourism, International Tourism Up 2% in Q1 2026 amid Growing Uncertainty, World Tourism Barometer news release, May 2026. https://www.untourism.int/news/international-tourism-up-2-in-q1-2026-amid-growing-uncertainty
• [S9] Knight Frank, Saudi Arabia Hospitality Market Review 2026 — KSA Hospitality and Religious Tourism Report, market report, 21 June 2026. https://www.knightfrank.com.sa/en/newsroom/article/2026/6/ksa-hospitality--religious-tourism-report
• [S10] Arab News, Saudi Arabia Welcomed 29.3m Foreign Tourists in 2025: OECD, news report on OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2026, 28 July 2026. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2652543/business-economy
• [S11] Arab News, Saudi Tourism Sector Revises 2030 Target to 150m Visitors, report from the Future Investment Initiative, 24 October 2023. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2396936/business-economy
• [S12] Gulf News, Saudi Arabia Targets 70 Million International Visitors a Year, news report, 29 September 2023. https://gulfnews.com/business/tourism/saudi-arabia-targets-70-million-international-visitors-a-year-1.98418045
• [S13] Gulf News, Saudi Arabia’s Tourism Soars: 116 Million Visitors, SR284 Billion Spending in 2024, news report on the Ministry of Tourism 2024 Annual Statistical Report, 23 June 2025. https://gulfnews.com/business/tourism/saudi-arabias-tourism-soars-116-million-visitors-sr284-billion-spending-in-2024-1.500173378
• [S14] Connecting Travel, Saudi Arabia Attracts 123m Tourists in Record Year, news report on the Ministry of Tourism 2025 Annual Statistical Report, 19 June 2026. https://connectingtravel.com/news/saudi-arabia-attracts-123m-tourists-in-record-year
• [S15] AGBI, Domestic Holidays Kept Saudi Tourism Hot During War, news analysis with interviews at the Saudi Tourism Forum, 19 June 2026. https://www.agbi.com/tourism/2026/06/domestic-visitors-boost-saudi-tourism-during-war/
• [S16] Trading Economics, Saudi Arabia Tourist Arrivals, dataset sourced to the Saudi Central Bank, retrieved 31 July 2026. https://tradingeconomics.com/saudi-arabia/tourist-arrivals