TOURISE is a permanent international tourism platform launched by Saudi Arabia in November 2025, bringing together public and private sector leaders from more than 100 countries and catalyzing investments exceeding $113 billion — transforming the Kingdom from a tourism destination into a convener of the global tourism agenda.
- Saudi Arabia launched TOURISE as a permanent platform rather than an annual conference, structurally differentiating it from WTM and ITB
- Platform-linked investments reached $113 billion, with participation from more than 10,000 leaders across 100 countries
- The November 2025 forum resulted in the adoption of the Riyadh Declaration at the UN Tourism General Assembly
- Whoever defines the standards directs investment flows: TOURISE produces white papers and international benchmarks
- Traditional agenda-setting competitors face a rival that combines sovereign funding with UN-backed legitimacy simultaneously
Since its official announcement in May 2025, the name TOURISE has reverberated through the corridors of the global tourism industry as something well beyond a new forum. According to Saudi Minister of Tourism Prince Ahmed Al-Khateeb, the platform defines itself as a shared roadmap for the next fifty years of global tourism — a characterization that does not typically come from an emerging tourism destination, but from an established institutional power seeking to lead the agenda rather than join it.
Context: From Destination to Platform
To appreciate the true scale of this shift, it is worth examining the landscape in which TOURISE took root. In 2024, Saudi Arabia reached its Vision 2030 target of attracting 100 million visitors annually — seven years ahead of schedule. On the economic front, the tourism sector now contributes roughly 5% of non-oil GDP, a clear signal of its growing role within the economic diversification framework. Yet the numbers alone do not explain the impetus behind TOURISE. Saudi Arabia chose to couple its hosting of the UN Tourism General Assembly with the launch of the new platform, affirming its position as a global hub for multi-dimensional sectoral dialogue.
More telling than the timing is the deliberate sequencing of events: the inaugural TOURISE conference opened in Riyadh from November 11 to 13, 2025, immediately following the 50th UN Tourism General Assembly, and sought to restructure cross-sector engagement so that competitors become partners and fragmented efforts converge. This sequencing is no organizational coincidence — it is a carefully calibrated diplomatic signal.
The Geo-Tourism Dimension: Riyadh Draws the Map
There is a fundamental distinction between a country that hosts a tourism conference and one that establishes a permanent global platform. TOURISE defines itself as the first global platform designed to unite visionary leaders from the public and private sectors across the ecosystems of tourism, technology, investment, and sustainability. That definition reveals a deeper strategy: occupying the institutional vacuum at the international level in a sector that has historically lacked an effective coordinating body bridging both sectors.
Analytical reports published in the wake of the summit noted that the most dominant theme to emerge from TOURISE 2025 was Saudi Arabia’s positioning at the center of global tourism dialogue — as a catalyst, convener, and collaborator. The Kingdom is no longer merely building destinations; it is shaping conversations, partnerships, and global frameworks. At the multilateral level, the conference led directly to the adoption of the Riyadh Declaration on the Future of Tourism, at the heart of the 26th UN Tourism General Assembly hosted by the Kingdom.
The geo-tourism positioning extends beyond the diplomatic file to the generation of a research agenda. The platform will publish substantive research outputs — including white papers and indicators developed in collaboration with international organizations — aimed at setting new benchmarks for tourism’s role in the global economy. Whoever owns the definition of standards owns the direction of investment flows.
Commercial and Operational Impact: What Has Actually Changed?
The true test of any international platform lies not in its founding rhetoric but in its deals and tangible outputs. The numbers here speak plainly. Since its launch, TOURISE has brought together nearly 10,000 leaders from more than 100 countries and has helped catalyze in excess of $113 billion in tourism-related investments.
At the level of individual deals, the proceedings of the November 2025 conference reveal a clear investment pattern. Rawaa Al-Madinah Holding, the investment arm of the Public Investment Fund, announced the signing of two hotel project agreements totaling $165 million with IHG Group and Adeera Hospitality Management during the forum. In the same context, Shaza Hotels signed memoranda of understanding for four new projects in the Kingdom during the TOURISE 2025 summit, encompassing Shaza Riyadh Stables Resort and Mysk projects in Mecca and Riyadh. Shaza also announced a global project portfolio valued at $950 million, spanning destinations from the Maldives to Turkey, Kenya, and the United States.
More notable from an operational standpoint is that TOURISE is not a conventional annual event. The platform is designed as a permanently active entity rather than a three-day summit. This is evident in its infrastructure: it operates through continuous engagement via digital collaboration, sector working groups, and thematic initiatives that extend beyond the boundaries of discrete events — a structural distinction that sets it apart from traditional counterparts such as WTM, ITB, and SITM.
Investment Impact: Anatomy of Capital Flow Structure
From an investment perspective, TOURISE operates across three parallel axes. The first is direct deal flow: the platform draws on a high-level advisory council of global industry leaders with the aim of opening an unprecedented stream of high-value deals and investment opportunities. The second is knowledge and standards flow, delivered through joint research with international organizations. The third axis — and the most strategic — is referential positioning: the Kingdom defines itself as the world’s largest single investor in tourism, with a portfolio spanning destinations, aviation, digital platforms, and human capital.
This positioning was reflected in the scale of corporate attendance at the inaugural summit. The keynote speaker roster included CEOs from the most prominent companies in the global sector, among them the CEO of Expedia, the CEO of Amadeus, the CEO of Accor Group, the CEO of Heathrow Airport, and the co-founder of KAYAK. That kind of gathering does not occur at just any forum — it occurs at forums that move decisions.
One signal worth noting for investors: Accor Group chose the inaugural TOURISE summit in Riyadh as the platform to unveil the global repositioning of the Pullman brand before an international audience of tourism leadership — aligning with Saudi Arabia’s ambition to lead global tourism innovation. This kind of strategic gravitational pull by major brands toward Riyadh indicates that the city now commands an attractiveness that extends well beyond its status as a promising market.
Winners and Those at Risk
In any shift in the structure of the international agenda, there are beneficiaries and those exposed to risk. On the beneficiary side: early investors in hospitality chains and digital tourism infrastructure within Saudi Arabia find in TOURISE a deal accelerator and a tool for reducing information costs. Likewise, less tourism-developed countries benefit from the framework established by the platform through its partnership with the World Economic Forum — the Ministry and its partner launched the “Beyond Tourism” initiative with the objective of transforming the global tourism industry through coordinated, measurable action across sustainability, inclusivity, and resilience.
Those most at risk are the organizations and forums that have historically held the position of international tourism agenda-setters — established European and Asian conferences — which now find themselves facing a competitor that simultaneously commands sovereign funding and UN-level legitimacy. There is also an internal institutional risk: any failure in governance or execution will cast a shadow over Saudi Arabia’s credibility as a neutral convener of international stakeholders.
Relevance to the Gulf States: An Exportable Model or a Source of Competitive Pressure?
For GCC countries, TOURISE presents a dual challenge. On one hand, it offers an opportunity to align under a platform that brings together global tourism investment leadership — as evidenced by the announcement that more than 1,000 leaders and experts from government, the private sector, investment, and technology participated in the inaugural edition. On the other hand, the momentum building around TOURISE is reshuffling the hierarchy of influence within the Gulf’s tourism landscape. The equation of regional balance is being redrawn around who seats others at the table, not who joins someone else’s.
Fahd Hamidani, CEO of the Saudi Tourism Authority and Vice Chairman of TOURISE’s board, described the Kingdom as “an ideal testing ground for new innovative concepts” — language that implicitly suggests the technologies and development models Saudi Arabia pilots today may become the regional standard tomorrow. The UAE, which has developed its tourism models independently of any shared regional platform, will face a strategic question: actively engage in shaping TOURISE’s rules, or remain on the outside watching them take form.
What Executives Should Monitor
Against this backdrop, four key areas of focus can be identified for decision-makers across travel, hospitality, and investment:
First — the pace at which TOURISE transitions from an event to an institutional infrastructure: The next TOURISE Global Summit is scheduled for March 2027, meaning the current phase marks the shift from an inaugural summit to a recurring cycle — the true test of institutional durability.
Second — the composition of the advisory board and the evolution of its representation: The current advisory board comprises 14 members drawn from tourism, technology, aviation, entertainment, education, sustainability, and media — making it one of the most cross-sectoral bodies in global tourism. If representation from Asian and African markets deepens, that will signal the platform is genuinely moving toward a multilateral character.
Third — the trajectory of the Riyadh-led AI alliance: TOURISE 2025 saw the announcement of an “AI Agenda Alliance” led by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Tourism, with backing from Trip.com, Red Sea Global, AWS, Amadeus, and Holibob, aimed at charting ethical and effective AI applications in the travel sector. The development of this alliance could reshape the competitive dynamics of the travel technology ecosystem.
Fourth — indicators of international capital flows toward platform-linked projects: TOURISE operates in partnership with multilateral institutions and global private-sector stakeholders as a gateway to high-value investment opportunities and frontier technologies. Tracking which deals are concluded inside the platform versus outside it will determine whether TOURISE is genuinely becoming a self-sustaining investment flow hub.
Ultimately, what warrants close scrutiny is not TOURISE itself, but the distance between its stated ambition — a roadmap spanning five decades — and its capacity to preserve its independence and neutrality when the interests of participating states converge. That distance will determine whether the Kingdom truly consolidates its grip on the sector’s agenda, or whether it remains one of many players competing for a centrality that admits only one seat at the front.
