Page 62 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 7

CPS2029 Amira Al-Salhi
Institutional factors include the calendar effects (religious festivals such as
Ramadan, Christmas, etc.) and timing decisions (school and industry vacations,
etc.).
This study is primarily concerned with research on the relationship
between Natural factors (especially the role of temperature, humidity, and
rainfall) and seasonality of tourism in the GCC countries.
Tourism in GCC
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a political and economic alliance of
six countries in the Arabian Peninsula: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. At the level of tourism indicators for the
GCC countries, the total number of inbound tourists to the GCC countries in
2017 reached about 59 million tourists which 59% of them are foreign visitors
(from outside GCC countries). As Figure 1 shows, about 30% of inbound
tourists to the GCC countries in 2017 came for the purpose of religion in Saudi
Arabia and 25% came for leisure.
Figure 1: Distribution of inbound tourists’ arrival to the GCC according to the main
purpose of the trip, 2017

13 %
32 %

Business Leisure
Religion other 25 %

30 %

Source: GCC - S tat c entre
The economic impact of tourism in GCC countries
The tourism industry plays a very large role in the global economy, it
contributed 10.4% to global GDP in 2017 and it the world’s fastest growing
sector at 4.6% (WTTC, 2018).
In GCC, the direct contribution of Travel and Tourism to GDP in 2017 was
USD54.7bn (3.8% of GDP). This is forecast to rise by 3.9% to USD56.8bn in
2018 (WTTC, 2018).
Figure 2 shows that leisure travel spending (inbound and domestic) in GCC
generated 75.4% of direct Travel and Tourism GDP in 2017 compared with
24.6% for business travel spending. leisure travel spending is expected to grow
by 3.7% in 2018, and rise by 4.6% in 2028 and business travel spending is
expected to grow by 2.6% in 2018, and rise by 5.4% in 2028 (WTTC, 2018).

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