Saudi Arabia's travel and tourism sector contributed $178 billion to the economy in 2025, 46% of the entire Middle East's travel and tourism economy, growing 7.4%, nearly double the global rate of 4.1%, with international visitor spending up 8.2% against a 3.2% global rate.
Nearly half of the entire region's tourism economy now lies in Saudi Arabia, growing at twice the global rate, a shift large enough that the map of Middle Eastern travel needs to be redrawn before the guidebooks catch up.
Explore more signals
Services Are The New Engine
PIF signed an MoU with ISquared Capital for up to $2bn, roughly $1bn each into digital infrastructureand district cooling, the unglamorous enablers behind real estate and datacenters
The takeaway: $1bn into digital infrastructure is a wager on compute demand; anyone in power, land, or connectivity near Riyadh should price a data-center boom into their plans.
AI use in Saudi Arabia doubled
The share of Saudi internet users using AI tools reached 45.2% in 2025, more than double the year before, per the CSTC's Saudi Internet Report, highest among 20–29 year-olds at 55.7%, and higher among women (52.8%) than men (39.4%). Business adoption reached 33.1% (up 20% year on year), led by information and communications at 61.1% and financial services at 52.9%.
Individuals are 12 points ahead of their employers in AI adoption, and 61.1% of information and communications firms are already using it. Sell capabilities now, because the buying committee is already using these tools personally, even where procurement hasn't caught up.
