According to United Nations World tourism organization (UNWTO) tourism’s contribution to MENA GDP expected to increase from $200 billion to over $350 billion by 2025, the sustainability of its impact on local economic development will be vital to the regions’ social and ecological future.
Tourism is a major economic pillar in some destinations within the MENA region, while the potential growth is still large in others. MENA comprises destinations of different sizes and varying degrees of development in terms of infrastructure, connectivity, promotion and brand strength. Oil-exporting based countries are diversifying their economies by integrating tourism in their development strategy, as a means to become less dependent on oil, create more business opportunities and boost investments in infrastructure and transport.
Building long-term development strategies and planning will ensure an effective management of the destination as well as the sustainable and inclusive development of tourism, creating jobs and providing investment opportunities. Many MENA countries are putting tourism at the core of their strategic long-term vision. Examples range from Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, Oman’s clustering system to 2040 or Sharjah’s Tourism Vision 2021.
International tourist arrivals grew an estimated 10% in 2018 in destinations over 2017, above the world’s average. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region welcomed 87 million international tourist arrivals in 2018, equivalent to 6% of the world’s total arrivals.
The region earned USD 77 billion in international tourism receipts in 2017, an estimated 6% of world’s receipts.
With the support of the United Nations Statistics Division, United Nations World tourism organization (UNWTO) has launched the initiative Towards a Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism. The aim is to develop an international statistical framework for measuring tourism’s role in sustainable development, including economic, environmental and social dimensions.
Such a standards-based framework can further support the credibility, comparability and outreach of various measurement and monitoring programs pertaining to sustainable tourism, including the derivation of Sustainable Development Goals indicators and those of UNWTO’s International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories.