Tag Archives: 9.7%

Saudi Arabia has achieved record growth in international visitor spending during the first quarter of 2025, with a 9.7% increase compared to the same period in 2024. According to the travel account data in the balance of payments for May, total spending by inbound visitors reached approximately SAR 49.4 billion in Q1 2025, driving a travel account surplus of SAR 26.8 billion—a growth of 11.7% compared with Q1 2024. The Ministry of Tourism explained that the significant increase in the travel account surplus reflects the continued efforts by the Ministry and the Saudi Tourism Ecosystem to advance the tourism sector and strengthen its contribution to the national economy. This growth also underscores the rapid development of the Kingdom’s tourism industry. The sector’s impressive performance highlights the impactful steps taken by the Saudi Tourism Ecosystem that position the Kingdom as a global tourism leader. These include adopting best practices in tourism development, constantly improving services and offerings, and actively collaborating with all government entities to support the sector’s development and achieve the goals of Saudi Vision 2030.

According to the latest data shared by IATA, Middle Eastern airlines saw a 9.7% year-on-year increase in demand. Capacity increased 9.0% year-on-year and the load factor increased 0.5ppt to 80.7% compared to May 2023. Asian routes to the Middle East are particularly strong, now standing some 32% higher than in 2019. Another notable development is the Europe-Middle East route, which saw an April-May RPK increase for two years in a row, reversing the previous historic pattern of a decline between these months. In the coming months, it will become clearer to what extent these trends could be related to the Russia-Ukraine war.   Air passenger market in detail – May 2024     May 2024 (% year-on-year) World share1 RPK ASK PLF (%-pt) PLF (level) Total Market 100% 10.7% 8.5% 1.7% 83.4% Africa 2.1% 13.4% 8.5% 3.2% 72.9% Asia Pacific 31.7% 14.9% 9.2% 4.0% 81.8% Europe 27.1% 10.3% 9.7% 0.4% 85.2% Latin America 5.5% 7.9% 5.3% 2.0% 83.4% Middle East 9.4% 10.2% 8.9% 0.9% 80.8% North America 24.2% 6.5% 6.5% 0.0% 85.8%   1% of industry RPKs in 2023