Saudi tourism hits 123m visitors in 2025, and non-religious travel becomes majority

Saudi Arabia welcomed a record 123m inbound and domestic tourists in 2025, and the biggest shift is not the headline number. Non-religious travel became the majority of inbound overnight visitors for the first time, accounting for approximately 52% of inbound overnight visitors' trip purpose in 2025.

This matters because tourism is no longer being counted only in pilgrimage-style categories. The Ministry of Tourism’s latest Annual Statistical Report shows non-religious purposes rose to more than half of inbound overnight visitors’ trip purposes, compared with 44% in 2019. At the same time, total tourism spending hit approximately SR304bn ($81.1bn), a historic high and up 7% year-on-year, while inbound tourists alone reached 29.3m and generated SR176.6bn ($47.1bn) in inbound spending.

Zoom out, and you can see why executives should pay attention. Saudi tourism spending is no longer just “activity growth,” it is trying to become a structural engine for economic diversification under Vision 2030. The report says tourism spending reached approximately SR304bn ($81.1bn) in 2025, with tourism growth of approximately 6% versus 2024 based on around 123m inbound and domestic tourists.

The data also suggests the sector is broadening its customer base in a way that changes which businesses win. In 2025, domestic tourism remained massive at 93.3m domestic tourists generating SR127.1bn ($33.9bn). In other words, the kingdom is not betting on one lane. Inbound demand is diversifying away from a purely religious split, while domestic travel still provides scale. For boards and operators, that combination tends to be stabilizing: one segment can buffer shocks in the other.

This is where the regulatory and strategy framing in the report becomes important. Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khateeb said the sector’s performance reflects continued support and “astute direction” from the Kingdom’s leadership, positioning tourism as a key enabler of economic diversification and Saudi Vision 2030 goals. He also described the 2025 results as signaling “structural transformation,” not just growth. The report’s wording leans into the idea that tourism is being built as a high-impact economic engine.

Financially, the report offers more than receipts and headcounts. It says tourism directly contributed 4.9% of GDP in 2024, with that contribution growing by 14% compared to the previous year. It also points to a macro balance-of-payments effect: a surplus of SR49.4bn ($13.2bn) in the travel account. The report adds that this contributed more than 61% of total exports in the services account. If you are sitting in finance or strategy, that is the kind of linkage that helps justify continued investment, because it connects tourism performance to national external balances.

Now consider the labor market, because it changes how you think about capacity and long-term operating models. Employment in tourism industries reached nearly 1.03m jobs in 2025. Saudi women accounted for around 47% of total Saudi employees in tourism characteristic activities, compared with 5% by the end of 2018. The Ministry frames this as the sector creating jobs and empowering national talent, which is a strong signal for workforce planning, training partnerships, and vendor ecosystems that rely on local labor pipelines.

Finally, the “non-religious is majority” finding has second-order implications for how the tourism ecosystem develops. When leisure, business, and other tourism segments account for about 52% of inbound overnight visitors’ trip purpose in 2025, operators and investors typically need to think differently about product design, marketing, and infrastructure than they would for religious-only demand. The report explicitly highlights that the shift reflects the growing role of leisure, business, and other segments alongside traditional religious tourism. Even if you never touch a booking engine yourself, this affects hotel mix, event calendars, transportation patterns, and the types of partnerships that scale.

For executives across hospitality, travel tech, retail, real estate, logistics, and destination services, these figures are a clear signal that Saudi tourism is not just expanding, it is rebalancing. Record scale (123m visitors), record spending (SR304bn), and majority non-religious inbound overnight trip purpose (52%) together create a compelling case for planning around diversified demand. The Ministry says investors, stakeholders, and researchers can access the full 2025 Annual Statistical Report through its official website, but even at the headline level, the direction is hard to miss: tourism is becoming an increasingly important contributor to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 economic diversification agenda.