GCC tourist visa approved, to be rolled out 'soon', says top official
The GCC single tourist visa has been approved and will be rolled out soon, said Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, UAE's Minister of Economy.
'The single (GCC) tourist visa has been approved and waiting now to be implemented, hopefully, soon. Now, it is with the Ministry of Interior and the relevant stakeholders and they should look into it,' Al Marri told Khaleej Times in an interview on the sidelines of the UAE Hospitality Summer Camp press conference on Monday.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have been discussing rolling out a unified tourist visa or GCC Grand Tours Visa for the region, similar to the Schengen tourist visa, over the past few years.
This visa will allow foreign tourists to visit all six member states – the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait – on a single visa.
Industry executives believe that the unified visa will be a game-changer for the regional tourism industry and overall economies, creating jobs along with a big boost to GDP.
They believe that the much-awaited unified GCC tourist visa will boost 'bleisure' (business-leisure) travel in the region, as visitors will increasingly mix the two to extend their trips to explore the neighbouring countries.
According to data released by the Statistical Centre for the Cooperation Council for the Arab Countries of the Gulf, the region welcomed 68.1 million visitors in 2023 and generated a record $110.4 billion in tourism revenue, a remarkable 42.8 per cent increase in tourist arrivals compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
The travel and tourism sector's contribution to the UAE economy continues to grow, taking the total employment numbers to 833,000 last year, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).
It is estimated that the number of jobs in the UAE's travel and tourism sector will touch one million by 2030, surpassing WTTC's estimates of 928,000 by 2034, with one in 9 residents working in the sector.
Dubai, a regional tourism hub, welcomed 7.15 million tourists in the first four months of 2025, representing a 7 per cent growth compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism.
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