Saudi Arabia has unveiled one of the tourism industry's most ambitious artificial intelligence strategies, positioning AI at the heart of how visitors discover destinations, businesses operate, and investors build the Kingdom's rapidly expanding tourism economy.
The Saudi Ministry of Tourism officially launched its AI Tourism Vision, a national strategy designed to transform every stage of the tourism journey through artificial intelligence — from planning holidays and designing hotel interiors to supporting tour guides, investors, and tourism operators. The initiative comes as Saudi Arabia continues to rapidly expand its tourism sector under Vision 2030, with the Kingdom increasingly combining large-scale infrastructure investment with digital innovation to compete with leading global destinations.
Building tourism's AI backbone
At the centre of the strategy is TourismX, a new AI-powered platform that the Ministry describes as the future digital infrastructure for Saudi Arabia's tourism industry. Launching initially in beta, the platform brings together a suite of AI tools designed to help tourism businesses improve efficiency and reduce operational costs.
Among its first capabilities are AI-assisted hotel interior design, automated menu creation, branding support, standard operating procedure generation, digital tour guide assistance, and AI-generated tour scripts. Rather than focusing solely on visitor-facing technology, TourismX aims to embed artificial intelligence throughout the tourism value chain, helping hospitality businesses, tour operators, restaurants, and entrepreneurs adopt AI regardless of their size.
One platform for the tourism industry
Alongside TourismX, the Ministry introduced the beta version of the Saudi MT App, bringing together government tourism services into a single AI-enabled platform for investors, tour guides, and tourism operators. The app is powered by Noura, an AI assistant developed to simplify access to ministry services, answer queries, and improve service delivery. To encourage wider innovation, the Ministry also launched the MT Developer Portal, giving technology companies and developers access to APIs and digital integration tools that can be used to build new tourism applications and services. The move signals a shift from government-led digitalisation to an open innovation model that encourages private-sector technology development.
From digital tourism to intelligent tourism
Saudi Arabia has spent the past few years digitising large parts of its tourism ecosystem through initiatives such as Smart Inspector and Smart Check-In. The new AI Tourism Vision represents the next phase of that transformation, moving beyond digital services towards intelligent, predictive, and personalised tourism experiences. The strategy also aligns with the Riyadh Declaration on the Future of Tourism, adopted during the 26th UN Tourism General Assembly, which called for greater use of emerging technologies to shape the future of global tourism. Its launch during Saudi Arabia's Year of AI 2026 further reinforces the Kingdom's ambition to position artificial intelligence as a key driver of economic diversification and public-sector innovation.
Commenting on the launch, Saudi Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khateeb said artificial intelligence is becoming as transformative as physical infrastructure once was. “Just as infrastructure reshaped economies over past decades, artificial intelligence is now reshaping how we discover destinations, design experiences, and manage tourism services,” he said. He added that Saudi Arabia's ambition is not simply to adopt AI but to become the global benchmark for smart tourism, using technology to improve visitor experiences while supporting tourism businesses and investors.
