The Gulf is building the future of global tourism, and every new hotel, restaurant and destination is a new opportunity for beverage brands.
No story captures the shift better than Saudi Arabia. Under Vision 2030 the Kingdom set a target of 100 million annual visits, and reached it six years early, in 2023. It has kept climbing: around 116 million visits in 2024 and 122 to 123 million in 2025, with a new target of 150 million by 2030. Tourism has grown from a small share of the economy to around a tenth of GDP.
Behind the numbers is an unprecedented wave of construction, the giga-projects: NEOM, Red Sea Global (adding some 8,000 luxury hotel rooms by 2030), Qiddiya, Roshn and Diriyah, which alone targets 27 million annual visitors by 2030.
Dubai welcomed a record 18.72 million international overnight visitors in 2024, up 9% on the previous year, supported by more than 154,000 hotel rooms running at roughly 78% occupancy. Abu Dhabi grew its international hotel guests by around 26% in the same year, drawing visitors from India, China, Russia, the UK and Saudi Arabia.
Bahrain, Qatar, riding the momentum of the 2022 World Cup, and Oman are all expanding their tourism and hospitality sectors. Across the region, hotels, restaurants, beach clubs and entertainment destinations keep opening.
Every venue that opens is a new set of listings, menus and pour opportunities. A booming on-trade is precisely where premium beverage brands, alcoholic where permitted and non-alcoholic everywhere, are discovered and ordered. The tourism boom is, in effect, a beverage-demand boom, for the brands present enough to capture it.
Sources: Saudi Tourism / Hotelier Middle East · Dubai Dept. of Economy & Tourism · AGBI — Abu Dhabi. Figures as reported; validate before commercial use.