Civic protests erupted in the country on October 17th 2019 triggering economic and political unrest. As a result, the latest data by the Ministry of Tourism revealed the number of tourists in the month of October 2019 stood at 142,624 travelers, down by 14.2% compared to October 2018. Nonetheless, the cumulative number of tourists rose by 5% year-on-year (YOY) to 1.75M tourists in the first ten months of the year.
On a monthly basis, the down tick in overall tourists in October 2019 alone revealed the sharpest downticks of 11.1% and 21.5% in tourists from Europe and the Arab countries, such that these respectively stood at 55,433 and 40,325 travelers in October. Tourists from the Americas also fell by an annual 3.5% to 20,934 over the same period.
Meanwhile, the increase in the cumulative number of tourists first ten months of the year revealed that Europeans constituted the largest portion of total tourists, grasping a lion’s share of 36.7%, while travelers from the Arab countries came in second with a share of 30.6%, tourist from the Americas with a stake of 18.8%, and finally Asia grasping 6.8% of total tourists.
In details, the number of European tourists overall rose by 7.3%YOY to 643,729. Most notably, visitors from the UK (8.1% of total tourists) more than doubled, rising from 67,840 tourists by October 2018 to 141,893 by October 2019. This may be partly attributed to the active cooperation earlier this year between the two countries who signed a trade continuity agreement among other initiatives to strengthen their bilateral relations. In turn, the number of French (9.2% of total tourists) and German (5.5% of total tourists) tourists grew by an annual 3.9% and 5.5% to 160,847 and 97,275 travelers, respectively.
Meanwhile, the number of tourists from the Arab countries increased by 14.1%YOY totaling 536,694 tourists by Oct. 2019. In fact, the number of tourists from Egypt (4.9% of total tourists) and the KSA (4.8% of total tourists) increased significantly from 74,784 and 48,885 to 85,776 and 84,690 tourists, respectively.
Lastly, tourists from the Americas rose by 6.4%YOY to reach 329,355 visitors by October 2019, of which 53.1% came from the USA. Tourists from the USA actually witnessed a yearly 6.1% uptick to 174,916 travelers over the same period. Canadians followed composing 31% of total tourists from the Americas, and recorded an annual downtick of 5.2% to 102,215 tourists.
Total Number of Tourists by October
