Corona Pandemic Impact on Saudi Arabia's Tourism and Travel Sector

Tourism and travel are one of the most essential sectors of the world economy. Saudi Arabian vision 2030 is to increase its contribution to become the next tourism leader in the Middle East. This paper focuses on the impact assessment of Covid-19 on the tourism and travel sector in Saudi Arabian. An analysis of the statistical information is studied to see the changes that occur over 2020 since the outbreak has begun. This paper provides insights into the decline in tourism and travel sectors.Domestic pilgrim's number fell by around 98% between 2019 and 2020. This decrease is caused by precautionary measures taken by Saudi authorities especially physical distancing to minimize contamination by COVID-19. According to the statistics on expenditure on domestic tourist trips for religious purposes, a clear drop in this revenue between 2019 and 2020 can be estimated at around 44% which is equivalent to about 6,898 million Riyals.The policy and strategies implemented in Saudi Arabia led to better control of Covid-19 in Saudi Arabia and reflect the different situations in Domestic tourism. According to the statistic of domestic tourism, domestic tourism demand declined by 12% in 2020 registering a total of 42 million trips VS 47.8 million trips in 2019. Tourism revenue decreased by about 30% (43 billion Riyal in 2020 VS 61 billion Riyal in 2019). The evolution of foreign pilgrims' numbers from 2014 up to 2020 where we can notice a significant drop (zero foreign pilgrims in 2020) which decreased by 100% in 2020 compared with last year (about 1,9 million foreign pilgrims). The COVID-19 Pandemic hurts the international tourism demand, according to the statistic, the inbound arrivals to KSA (the most important direction for Muslims) in 2020 decreased by 94% compared with 2019 (17.5 million Trips in 2019 VS 4.1 million Trips in 2020). International tourism revenue decreased by 81% in 2020 (20.1 billion Riyal in 2020 VS 103.4 billion Riyal in 2019).