75.7 million tourists visited GCC countries in 2025

The Director General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Statistical Center, Intissar Al-Wahabi, stated that the Gulf countries received approximately 75.7 million tourists in 2025, while visitor spending reached about 131.9 billion US dollars.

This was said during the eighth regional workshop on innovation in tourism statistics, organized by the Center in Muscat under the theme “Data Integration and Trend Analysis,” as part of efforts to enhance joint GCC work in the field of statistics and highlight the economic and developmental role of the tourism sector.

Al-Wahabi added that the total economic contribution of the tourism sector in the Gulf countries amounted to approximately 254.7 billion dollars, pointing to several tourism indicators that reflect the scale of transformation the sector has undergone in the GCC countries in recent years.

In this regard, she noted that the economic contribution of the tourism sector grew at an annual rate of 7.3% between 2019 and 2025, surpassing the global growth rate of 6.7%.

She emphasized that the tourism sector in the Gulf countries is experiencing “continuous growth and holds a prominent position” within national development plans and strategies.

In this context, Al-Wahabi said that Gulf tourism has strengthened its position on the international tourism map, with the GCC countries accounting for about 5% of international tourist flows, compared to 6.9% of global tourism revenues.

She added that these indicators reflect a tourism presence in terms of value and revenue that exceeds its share of tourist numbers, noting that this growth coincided with the average progress in implementing the GCC Tourism Strategy reaching 73.8% by 2025.