World Travel Market: Middle East doubles tourist numbers since pandemic

Global Travel Report 2024 shows overnight visitor numbers driven by rapid intra-GCC growth

Tourists look at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Events such as the Expo have boosted tourism within the GCC region. Chris Whiteoak / The National

International visitors to the Middle East have doubled in number in just five years, according to the latest Global Travel Report. Compiled by the World Travel market and Oxford Economics, the report said tourism in the region is being led by the GCC states.

The Gulf countries are now not only strong destinations, but also sources of tourists, as travel within the GCC becomes more widespread. This intra-GCC travel trend is now so prominent that "residents are increasingly travelling across borders within this sub-region in a way that is consistent with domestic demand in many other countries", the report said.

"We're seeing improvements in a lot relationships between GCC countries," said Dave Goodger, managing director EMEA Tourism Economics, which is part of the research company Oxford Economics. "They've seen an increase in their cross-border travel within the GCC in the past couple of years."

Apart from improved relations, big events such as the World Cup in Qatar and the Expo in Dubai are drawing in tourists from across the region and the rest of the world. Easier border controls and visa regulations are also providing a boost, as are growing travel connectivity and improving destination desirability.

However, the report does point out the whole Middle East region is "subject to a high degree of uncertainty due to the direct and indirect consequences of ongoing conflicts and instability".

Mr Goodger told the World Travel Market conference in London on Tuesday that while global geopolitical "hot spots" persist, the report's methods and forecasting see them eventually being resolved, but they would not "vanish overnight".

"We don't anticipate any huge escalation, so we're not looking at big regional wars. That's not something we want to include in our forecasts," he said.

Global record

Overall, the Global Travel Report found that travel has reached new records, with 1.5 billion overnight arrivals expected by the end of 2024. Essentially, the post-pandemic years were dominated by so-called "revenge travel", during which travellers were making up for lost time after pandemic lockdowns. Then 2023 was seen as a year of recovery and now, 2024 is the year of growth.

"We're entering a new phase. This is the growth phase," Mr Goodger said. "We're back to 2019 levels, but 2019 levels were achieved after years of growth. 2024 is going to set new benchmark, a new record level."

What will be the engine for growth in a number of tourist markets, including the GCC and the wider Middle East, will be China. At the moment, outbound travel from China remains below 2019 levels but, according to the report, as China recovers economically and more families are drawn into the middle class, foreign travel should take off.

The forecast is for Chinese outbound travel to rise by 80 per cent by 2030, while Indian outbound travel will double. "We anticipate that the number of international overnight arrivals per year will grow from 1.5 billion this year to surpass 2 billion before the end of this decade," the report predicted.

Mr Goodger said the boom in domestic travel that characterised the pandemic years is now slowing. "Over the next couple of years international travel will grow by 12 per cent, while domestic will grow by just 3 per cent," he said. "It's the international that's taking over. We are seeing a lot of households take fewer trips, but spending longer on those trips, and spending more on that travel."