The Saudi-state media outlets have long been promoting the alleged success of Vision 2030, which was launched by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). However, reality and figures have refuted these baseless media claims.
As we say goodbye to 2023 and welcome the new year, we use the tourism industry as an example of MBS’s misguided policies. MBS used all of the Kingdom’s funds to develop its revenue rates, equipment, and sources of income diversification for tourism.
With the launch of Vision 2030 in 2015 and seven years later, in 2022, it became evident that nothing had changed in the tourism sector save billions of dollars being squandered on entertainment projects that had no bearing on tourism and did not actually contribute to the Kingdom’s tourism future.
Apart from the local tourism figures, we also examine the actual foreign tourism figures, which MBS’s media is attempting to highlight as successes, despite the fact that these figures showed a discernible downturn under his administration and prior to his misguided vision.
Approximately 17.99 million tourists arrived in the Kingdom in 2015, but remarkably, despite all the advertising and promotion efforts, the number of visitors dropped to 16.64 million in 2022, according to official government statistics.
The number of tourists departing the country decreased as well, from roughly 20.82 million in 2015 to approximately 16.88 million in 2022.
Only domestic tourism has experienced “growth,” with figures rising from 46.45 million in 2015 to 77.84 million in 2022. However, it should be noted that the figures for 2022 are totals that we have not yet disclosed, as MBS classified every departure from the Kingdom as a tourist, regardless of the reason for departure—for vacation, medical treatment, ending a work contract in the Kingdom, or any other reason.
Taking into account the rise in visitors to Medina, it is noteworthy that the percentage of individuals traveling to Mecca from these figures represents 52% of the total number of visitors to Saudi Arabia. All of this demonstrates that MBS added nothing, since the percentage of religious tourism that is done for the Hajj, Umrah, and visiting holy sites is a legacy that MBS did not work to ensure its success. In contrast, he introduced new attitudes to Saudi conservative and Islamic society.
Goals of travelers in the Kingdom during the MBS era seem to have nothing to do with the entertainment endeavors of Saudi Crown Prince and his right-hand man Turki Al-Sheikh. Quite the reverse; their vision might have contributed to a fall in religious tourism in response to calls for people to boycott the Kingdom due to MBS’s social and political views; most of these visits, however, were for family, the Hajj and Umrah, and came from countries that regularly entered the Kingdom, like Egypt, Iraq, and the Gulf States.
Considering the aforementioned figures and the billions of dollars that MBS spends each month on the tourism industry, we will leave it to the citizen who is burned by excessive costs and taxes to make his own comparisons and come to terms with the reality of MBS’s failure.
