Saudi travel market anchors uneven regional rebound

The ceasefire is nearly a month old, and the needle on regional travel is finally moving again — but unevenly and not everywhere. Saudi Arabia has been by far the most resilient throughout the conflict.

Recovery is happening: Searches and bookings across travel marketplace Wego’s platform are ticking up around 10% since the ceasefire, and hotels in the worst-hit markets have more than doubled occupancy w-o-w in the second week after hostilities erupted.

Saudi is the standout. The Kingdom is “pretty much business as usual,” Wego Chief Business Officer Mamoun Hmeidan tells EnterpriseAM. Flight routing and airspace barely budged even at the peak of the war, with the Kingdom’s travel market taking only around a 10% hit throughout — a fraction of what other GCC markets absorbed.

DATA POINT- Searches on Wego were up 15.5% y-o-y, and bookings were essentially flat at 0.7% y-o-y since the start of the ceasefire until mid-April. That’s against a wider regional picture, where overall GCC search activity was still down 6.7% y-o-y at the time.

Religious travel in particular is holding up strongly. The Kingdom pulled in 18.5 mn Umrah visitors from outside its borders last year, and Wego expects that number to keep climbing. “Pilgrimage flows linked to Hajj and Umrah are less price-sensitive and less discretionary than typical leisure demand, providing a consistent underpinning even during periods of regional uncertainty,” Richard Maslen, head of analysis at CAPA – Centre for Aviation, tells EnterpriseAM.

Layer in the Kingdom’s heavy domestic anchoring — strong point-to-point flows and significant government-backed investment in capacity and infrastructure — and the picture sharpens.

One product to watch: Wego has been quietly accelerating its partnership with the Kingdom's Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, which will let users apply for their Umrah visa, book flights and hotels, and book a full package entirely through the platform. Wego has already successfully issued its first test visa, and the full product is set to go live right after Hajj season wraps, in time for the Umrah season opening in early June.

The regional picture

A patchwork rebound, not a uniform one. “In the two weeks following the ceasefire, we’ve seen a clear but uneven rebound in aviation demand across the GCC,” Maslen says. “The initial response has been strongest in core hub markets, where connectivity, airline scale, and transfer traffic provide a faster recovery base.”

Hmeidan echoed this sentiment. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the UAE were 20-30% recovered, and Oman has been business-as-usual throughout. But not everyone is catching the updraft. “Kuwait, unfortunately, is still out of action,” with the airport hit multiple times and still not back in operation. Bahrain is “quite distressed.” Put it all together, and the most-affected markets were collectively running at around 40% of where they should be when we talked to Wego in mid-April.

The recovery is real, but it’s still too early to call it, Hmeidan says. The caveat is that with the ceasefire still in question and no firm agreement reached between the US and Iran, “the situation has not yet resolved completely.”

It’s looking good in the medium term. “What we see now is very short-term. We're still seeing demand, we’re still seeing searches, but a bit shifted toward late 3Q and the beginning of 4Q,” Hmeidan says. Most of the regional events originally slated for February through April were postponed — some will land in August, and most from October onward — and that pipeline alone should pull recovery numbers back into meaningful territory.

Still, ambitious tourism targets? Probably off the table this year. “Everybody's aware of that because we missed a very critical period,” Hmeidan says, referring to the peak travel window that normally hits in the final weeks of Ramadan — compounded this year by overlapping school holidays. That period coincided with the core of the conflict, and the Eid Al Adha season falls during a naturally slower stretch before summer.

The displaced demand created new winners. As corridors closed and travelers looked for alternatives, demand shifted — and a few destinations absorbed the overflow. Saudi outbound bookings to Egypt are up 6.2% y-o-y, while UAE outbound bookings to Egypt are up 15.6% y-o-y. Bookings to Pakistan jumped 48.8% y-o-y, Bangladesh 60.9% y-o-y, and India 5.3% y-o-y — a pattern Hmeidan attributes in part to expats heading home. “Egypt is definitely taking the interest of travelers that would consider coming to the region at this point in time,” he tells us.

The sector was better equipped this time around

The airlines learned from Covid — and it shows. Hmeidan praised how the industry handled the disruption this time around, compared with the chaos of five years ago. Full refund policies were in place almost immediately, every ticket became flexible, and changes were quick. Hotels — especially resorts and beach properties — flooded the market with offers. The payoff: occupancy rates in most hotels in the affected countries recovered quickly from the first-week dip, gaining almost 100% w-o-w in the second week, Hmeidan says.

Maslen sees the same playbook from a sector-wide vantage point. “The aviation sector's operational response has been both rapid and critical to restoring traveler confidence. Airlines moved quickly to introduce flexible booking policies, fee waivers, and refund options, effectively reducing the perceived risk of travel. At the same time, pricing strategies were adjusted to stimulate demand without undermining long-term yield.”

“Confidence returns faster when risk is removed from the booking decision,” Maslen said, adding that the quick moves ultimately restored trust to some extent.