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Saudi Arabia expects this to open up marine tourism through the Yanbu Commercial Port
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The country’s tourism sector has seen several setbacks because of the Covid-19 pandemic
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, July 28, announced that the Yanbu Commercial Port had received its first cruise ship on Tuesday.
The port, one of Saudi Arabia’s oldest in the Red Sea, saw the cruise ship with “a number of tourists” dock there, the country said in a statement.
This could open the floodgates for tourism through the port, which has traditionally been one that handles cargo.
It does handle passengers, but so far they have been usually pilgrims coming into the country for Hajj.
The Saudi statement said: “Yanbu Commercial Port operates amid an integrated system of marine and operational preparations.”
It explained that this is a testament of the port’s readiness to “receive cruise ships and enable the marine tourism sector in Saudi Arabia.”
Market research firms have estimated that the travel and tourism industry of Saudi Arabia had total revenues of $46.9bn in 2019, having grown constantly from 2015.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic came as a major dampener, forcing the country to scale down Hajj tourism, which up until 2019 had contributed to 20% of Saudi Arabia’s non-oil GDP.
Over the past few months, the country has been looking to reopen tourism, but with proper health and safety measures in place.
On Tuesday, it even announced a travel ban of three years on those Saudi citizens who had travelled to countries that are on its non-travel blacklist at the moment because of their rising numbers of Covid-19 cases.