Saudi Arabia Launches AI Tourism Vision Built on TourismX and Noura

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Tourism launched the AI Tourism Vision on June 28, 2026, anchoring the strategy on TourismX, the Saudi MT App, the AI assistant Noura and the MT Developer Portal.

The package lands on top of an industry that already moved into mass-market scale, with 115.9 million tourists recorded in 2024 and 140.9 million passengers passing through Saudi airports in 2025, according to the Ministry of Tourism release carried by the Saudi Press Agency and GASTAT data.

The Four Tools That Anchor the Vision

The Ministry of Tourism rolled out four software anchors in its beta phase, each aimed at a different constituency of the travel trade.

TourismX sits at the centre as the global AI platform dedicated to tourism. Its beta version ships with tools aimed at daily hospitality and tour-design operations, including the Hotel Interior AI Designer, MenuCraft AI, AI Identity Designer, AI Hotel SOP Generator, Tour Guide AI Assistant and AI Tour Script Generator. The Ministry positioned TourismX as the new digital infrastructure for the sector. The launch builds on the Riyadh Declaration on the Future of Tourism, adopted at the 26th UN Tourism General Assembly in Riyadh in 2025.

Just as infrastructure reshaped economies over past decades, artificial intelligence is now reshaping how we discover destinations, design experiences, and manage tourism services.

Tourism Minister Ahmed Al-Khateeb delivered the launch announcement on June 28, 2026, the SPA release confirmed. The Saudi MT App pulls Ministry services for investors, tourism businesses and tour guides into one AI-powered interface, with Noura handling user-facing questions about services, regulations and opportunities. The MT Developer Portal opens the Ministry’s systems to outside developers with APIs and integration tools, which the announcement said would let travel-tech firms and booking platforms build scalable solutions. Two earlier digital tools sit alongside the four launches. The Ministry release credits Smart Inspector with field inspection support during the Hajj 1447H season and Smart Check-In with faster pilgrim reception at accommodation sites.

TourismX Becomes the New Digital Infrastructure

The choice to lead with TourismX signals where the Ministry expects the heaviest operational lift. The platform is built around tools that solve everyday pain points rather than launching a single marquee product. Hotel operators can sketch interiors, food and beverage businesses can generate menus, and tour designers can build guide scripts, all from one beta environment. The Ministry release packages TourismX as a working tool for the trade without announcing pricing for the platform.

For B2B travel trade, the value sits in speed. A DMC sketching a new Saudi cultural itinerary or a hotel group rewriting its SOP stack can move from blank page to working draft inside TourismX, then export the result. Tour Guide AI Assistant and Tour Script Generator target the guide and content layer that tour operators usually rebuild by hand.

Saudi MT App and Noura Reorganise Trade Access

The Saudi MT App consolidates what used to live across separate Ministry portals, with Noura handling the conversation layer. The app serves investors, tourism business owners, tour guides and tourism professionals under one interface.

Noura answers questions about ministry services, regulations and opportunities, which the Ministry said would shorten wait times on routine trade queries. For operators who previously emailed or called desks for licence renewals, permit checks, or rate-card guidance, the app shortens the path to a single chat. The Saudi App Store listing for the app confirms Noura is built in alongside a Hotel Interior AI Designer, indicating tool access is not limited to the TourismX web environment. The move also targets the foreign-investor audience, with international travel companies looking at Saudi product or expansion able to use Noura to scan regulations and entry steps in plain language rather than navigating PDF guidance.

The Ministry framed this as opening the sector to outside capital and know-how. Noura’s accuracy will depend on the underlying Ministry data she draws from. The Saudi MT App launches as a beta, the SPA release confirmed, and updates will land as more services move into the platform.

The Scale Behind the Launch

Two figures explain the timing. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Tourism reported 115.9 million tourists in 2024. The base splits into 29.7 million inbound and 86.2 million domestic travellers.

GASTAT, the General Authority for Statistics, put 2025 airport traffic at 140.9 million passengers, a 9.6 per cent jump on 2024 and the second consecutive year over the 100 million tourist threshold. International arrivals hit 75.8 million passengers in 2025, while domestic traffic reached 65.1 million. The 150 million annual visits target by 2030 is the demand ceiling the new digital layer has to support.

At that scale, the Kingdom needs digital coordination that human ministry desks cannot deliver. Multilingual guidance, business licensing, digital itineraries, and real-time destination planning depend on software that scales with visitor volume. TourismX and Noura are positioned to close that gap.

• 115.9 million tourists in Saudi Arabia in 2024 (29.7M inbound, 86.2M domestic)
• 140.9 million airport passengers in 2025, up 9.6 per cent on 2024
• 75.8 million international airline passengers in 2025
• 65.1 million domestic airline passengers in 2025
• 150 million annual visits is the Vision 2030 target by 2030

Aviation Growth Adds Pressure for Digital Coordination

Air traffic growth is the second pressure point on digital infrastructure. GASTAT’s 2025 air transport report records more than 140.9 million passengers across the Kingdom’s airports and total flights of 979.8 thousand, split into 506.3 thousand domestic and 473.5 thousand international movements.

• King Abdulaziz International Airport, Jeddah: 53.5 million passengers in 2025, ranked first in the Kingdom
• King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh: 40.8 million passengers, ranked second
• King Fahd International Airport, Dammam: 13.7 million passengers, ranked third

Route expansion is moving with passenger growth. Saudi international airports reached 66 countries and 176 destinations in 2025, both year-on-year increases. The Kingdom sat 18th on the Global Air Connectivity Index 2025, down one place from 17th in 2024, per GASTAT figures on 2025 airport passenger growth. For the travel trade, a wider route map brings more diversity of inbound traveller types, which means the Ministry’s digital service layer has to support more languages, regulations, and operator workflows.

Year of AI 2026 and the Riyadh Declaration

The Ministry placed the AI Tourism Vision inside a wider national technology context. Saudi Arabia designated 2026 as the Year of Artificial Intelligence through the Council of Ministers, chaired by Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority has set the year’s agenda, and tourism is now one of the named sectors, within a national framework that includes data infrastructure and cloud capacity.

The Ministry release also tied the launch to the Riyadh Declaration on the Future of Tourism, adopted at the 26th session of the UN Tourism General Assembly hosted in Riyadh in 2025. That declaration called on member states to accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies in tourism planning. Saudi Arabia is now pointing to domestic tools as one of the first concrete national implementations of that call, per the SPA release.

Tourism now sits alongside finance, energy, and health on Saudi Arabia’s Year of AI adoption list. The 26th session of the UN Tourism General Assembly in Riyadh ran under an AI-focused tourism theme, the SPA release confirmed. The AI Tourism Vision is the Ministry’s local translation of that theme, layered onto an existing digital portfolio that already includes Smart Inspector and Smart Check-In.

Where Travel Trade Adoption Will Be Tested First

The launch is the framework. Trade adoption is the test. Travel agents and tour operators will judge TourismX on whether its drafts survive a human editor, whether the Tour Guide AI Assistant covers the routes they sell, and whether the Tour Script Generator produces scripts that match a real guide’s voice.

Hoteliers will watch the Hotel Interior AI Designer and SOP Generator for output quality and language coverage. For developers and travel-tech firms, the MT Developer Portal is the bigger lever; if the API set is open and the documentation clean, the portal can plug into booking engines, CRM systems and destination apps used by international tour operators, and if it is gated, the trade will route around it. The Ministry has signalled more rollouts to come and named tourism as central to Vision 2030 economic diversification, with the 150 million annual visit target as the demand ceiling the system has to support. Trade adoption in the first 12 months will indicate whether TourismX scales to that load or stalls in beta.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Saudi Arabia AI Tourism Vision?

It is the Saudi Ministry of Tourism’s strategy launched on June 28, 2026 to embed artificial intelligence across the visitor journey, operator workflows, and digital services for the travel trade. The strategy introduces TourismX, the Saudi MT App, Noura, and the MT Developer Portal as its four software anchors.

What is TourismX?

TourismX is a global AI platform dedicated to tourism. Its beta version includes Hotel Interior AI Designer, MenuCraft AI, AI Identity Designer, AI Hotel SOP Generator, Tour Guide AI Assistant and AI Tour Script Generator, aimed at hospitality, food and beverage, and tour-design teams.

What does Noura do?

Noura is an AI assistant inside the Saudi MT App that handles user-facing questions about ministry services, regulations and opportunities for investors, tourism business owners, tour guides and other professionals.

How big is Saudi Arabia’s tourism base?

The Saudi Ministry of Tourism reported 115.9 million tourists in 2024, including 29.7 million inbound and 86.2 million domestic visitors. GASTAT recorded 140.9 million airport passengers in 2025, a 9.6 per cent rise on 2024.

What is the MT Developer Portal?

It is a digital environment for APIs and integration tools the Ministry of Tourism launched alongside TourismX. The portal is designed for developers and technology partners to build tourism solutions that connect to the Kingdom’s tourism systems.