GCC unified visa on the cards

Tourism has taken a leap in the GCC region and becoming the new oil of the region. The region has been the most resilient and a leader in creation of jobs, especially in the travel, tourism and hospitality sectors. Ministerial level talks are ongoing to introduce a new scheme to unify countries in the region with one single visa akin to the European Schengen visa.

Shehara Rizly

During the FIFA World Cup, Hayya card proved to be a great help in co-promotion of destinations across the GCC region. Some time back, His Royal Highness in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had shared that GCC will be the new Europe. This has been proven, especially after the pandemic, as the GCC was the first to take necessary action to provide both locals and expats every opportunity to safeguard themselves, with the vaccination drives and quarantine standards. Today, UNWTO for the second time has announced that Middle East region is the fastest growing in terms of tourism recovery.

At Arabian Travel Market 2023, it was interesting to hear from a panel of speakers about the way the GCC region will unify further to bring in more co-promoting opportunities in future. The panel comprised H.E. Fatima Al Sairafi, Minister of Tourism, Ministry of Tourism, Kingdom of Bahrain, H. E. Abdulla Al Saleh, Undersecretary, Government of UAE, and Fahd Hamidaddin, CEO, Saudi Tourism Authority. H.E. Fatima Al Sairafi shared that co-promoting the region as a unified destination will increase tourism revenues and footfall in every country of the region.  H. E. Abdulla Al Saleh explained how the seven emirates have been working under one umbrella showcasing their unique attractions to different source markets and success over the years where the UAE is one of the key destinations in every traveller’s bucket list. Hamidaddin shared the new ventures and the outlook by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, how things have taken a positive turn, firstly with their proactive nature in making the visa process so much smoother, especially for the residents of GCC.

H.E. Fatima Al Sairafi said, “When we announced our five-year strategy from 2022 until 2026, one of the key performance indicators that we included in the strategy is the number of tourists that would visit Bahrain. Initially the KPI was 8.3 million tourists for 2022, so the actual number that was achieved was 9.9 million. The reason to share this number today is because of one key initiative the Kingdom of Bahrain did that was different than the previous years. What the Kingdom of Bahrain started to do was co-promote Bahrain as a unified destination with some of the countries in the GCC. We started this as a pilot project with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and we are underway with the rest of the GCC countries as well. That initiative itself increased the tourism traffic in the Kingdom of Bahrain.”

1. E. Abdulla Al Saleh, reiterated, “We have an experience in UAE, we have seven emirates, where each emirate develops itself as a destination for tourists, at the same time competing with the other, but the competition is healthy.”

Hamidaddin explained, “From day one when we launched Saudi, we said welcome to Arabia because we believe the whole participants in the panel are part of Arabia. It was announced by UNWTO that this part of the world is the fastest growing region, followed by Asia Pacific. So, what I’m saying is world travellers today, when they think of travel, they think of the region.”