Saudi Arabia launched a Package Visa pilot on July 6, 2026, joining the tourist visa, the round-trip flight, and the licensed hotel into a single booking. The new service, carried by the official announcement of the Package Visa pilot, runs through approved general travel and tourism service providers in selected pilot markets. The Package Visa extends the Kingdom’s earlier moves to open the door to more international visitors.
The pilot is the joint work of the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Interior, and the Insurance Authority. Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khateeb framed the launch as the next step in Saudi Arabia’s tourism opening. The Package Visa sits alongside the tourist e-Visa, visa on arrival, and Stopover Transit Visa, a stack that helped Saudi Arabia welcome more than 29 million inbound visitors in 2025. The Ministry of Tourism’s 2025 Annual Statistical Report puts the inbound number at 29.3 million.
What the Package Visa Puts in a Single Booking
A Package Visa booking is built around three pieces, all arranged through one approved provider. Visitors buy a round-trip flight, accommodation in a Ministry-licensed hotel, and the electronic tourist visa application in the same package. The provider can also add events, activities, and tourism experiences as optional extras.
Saudi Arabia’s tourism story has always been about ambition, openness, and continuous progress. With the Package Visa, we are taking the next step: empowering our travel and tourism partners, simplifying the journey for visitors, and creating a smarter, more seamless way to experience Saudi Arabia. This pilot is a glimpse of what comes next, and we invite our partners and future visitors to be part of it.
Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khateeb made the remarks in a July 6, 2026, statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency. The same statement said the model is ‘a glimpse of what comes next’ for Saudi tourism under Vision 2030. The package approach, the SPA added, is designed to ‘create a smarter, more seamless way to experience Saudi Arabia.’ For visitors, that means fewer separate bookings, with the whole trip handled by one accredited travel provider.
A single transaction signs off the visa, the flight, and the hotel, with the package itself billed as a single integrated package by the Ministry. End to end, the booking sits with the accredited travel provider. Visitors do not have to coordinate separate visa forms, flight confirmations, and hotel reservations on their own.
- Confirmed round-trip flight
- Accommodation in a Ministry-licensed hotel
- Electronic tourist visa application
- Travel insurance bundled into the visa fee
- Optional add-ons: events, activities, and tourism experiences
Seven Pilot Countries, Two Accredited Providers
The Package Visa is open to citizens of seven countries in this first stage. The Ministry of Tourism has published the eligible countries, fees, and stay rules for the Package Visa: Jordan, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, and Pakistan. Additional nationalities will be added in future phases, the Ministry said. Only travel providers that the Ministry has accredited are allowed to sell the package.
The pilot’s rollout through approved travel providers opens with two accredited agencies, Reserval and Almosafer. To qualify, providers must run secure digital booking platforms, maintain 24/7 technical support, and operate dedicated call centres. The Ministry also requires the hotel to be a licensed property rated at least four stars, with the stay length matched to the flight itinerary. The visa is single entry, and travellers must complete the booking at least 48 hours before departure.
- Visa fee: SR402.21 (US$107), covering the visa and the health insurance
- Minimum package value: SR4,000 (US$1,065) per adult for the first two days
- Each additional day: at least SR1,000 (US$266) per day
- Maximum stay: 88 days; minimum stay: 2 days
- Processing: up to 48 hours after booking and data verification
- Validity: 3 months from the scheduled departure date
The Four-Step Path from Click to Boarding Pass
The Package Visa is a fully digital process, the SPA said, and the Ministry of Tourism breaks it into four steps. The visitor picks a tourism package from an authorised travel agency. Payment goes through the agency’s digital platform.
Once payment clears and the visitor’s data is verified, the electronic tourist visa and the travel insurance are issued by email. The whole verification and issuance cycle runs to a maximum of 48 hours. The same email delivers the booking documents, the flight confirmation, the hotel voucher, and the visa record. Travellers cannot book less than 48 hours before departure. The 48-hour lead time is mandatory under the pilot’s rules.
The package covers the period from arrival to departure, and the hotel stay has to match the flight dates exactly. Packages themselves do not include services or activities in Makkah or Madinah, the Ministry said. Once inside Saudi Arabia, a Package Visa holder can travel anywhere in the Kingdom, including the holy cities, on the same tourist visa. Religious visits such as Umrah sit outside the package, but the visa itself does not bar them.
The 2025 Tourism Numbers Behind the Launch
The Package Visa lands on top of a record tourism year for Saudi Arabia. The 2025 tourism statistics behind the launch show the Ministry of Tourism counted around 123 million inbound and domestic tourists in 2025, an increase of approximately 6% on 2024. Total tourism spending reached SR304 billion, up 7% from 2024.
The international side of that figure is the more relevant one for the pilot. Saudi Arabia received 29.3 million international visitors in 2025, who spent SR176.6 billion. Domestic travel added 93.3 million trips and SR127.1 billion in spending. Non-religious travel accounted for about 52% of inbound overnight visits in 2025, compared with 44% in 2019.
Tourism contributed 4.9% of Saudi Arabia’s GDP in 2024, with growth continuing through 2025, the report said. A first-time visitor guide to Saudi Arabia can sit beside those numbers as a way to compare the Package Visa with the e-Visa, visa on arrival, and Stopover Transit Visa. The comparison helps frame the scale the new pilot is being measured against.
Employment in tourism industries reached nearly 1.03 million jobs in 2025. Saudi women now account for around 47% of Saudi employees in tourism-related activities, up from 5% at the end of 2018. The Package Visa, in the Ministry’s framing, is meant to feed that pipeline by lengthening stays and lifting visitor spending. The pilot’s eligible-country list of seven, with India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan among them, targets the visitor pools that drove much of the 2025 inbound growth. The economics of those pools, from per-traveller spend to length of stay, are the metrics the Ministry says the pilot is meant to encourage.
- 29.3 million international visitors to Saudi Arabia in 2025
- SR304 billion in total tourism spending in 2025, up 7% year-on-year
- 1.03 million tourism sector jobs in Saudi Arabia in 2025
- 47% share of Saudi women in tourism-related employment
- 52% of inbound overnight visits in 2025 were non-religious, against 44% in 2019
What the Pilot Does Not Cover
The Package Visa is a pilot, and it comes with the limits a pilot carries. The eligible country list is seven names long at launch, and the rest of the e-Visa-eligible world is not covered by the Package Visa. Travel providers outside the Ministry’s accredited list, including most regional agents, cannot sell the package. The model is also single entry, ruling out a multi-stop itinerary that uses Saudi as one of several destinations.
The mandatory package minimum of SR4,000 per adult for the first two days, plus SR1,000 per additional day, sets a floor that pushes the package out of budget-travel territory. Religious tourism is not part of the package, even though the visa itself allows travel to Makkah and Madinah. The booking lead time of at least 48 hours shuts out spontaneous travel. The Package Visa serves planned trips, not impulse visits. And the single-entry rule means a Saudi stopover inside a wider regional tour is off the table.
The Industry Build-Out Already Underway
Saudi tourism is not waiting for the Package Visa to scale its digital layer. The pilot lands alongside a broader push to integrate AI into booking and itinerary tools, and the Ministry’s two accredited launch providers have spent the last year building the digital platforms the pilot now requires. Almosafer, one of the two accredited agencies, has tied its own AI work to turning visitor interest into confirmed bookings, a thread picked up in Saudi tourism’s AI personalization push. The pilot’s 24/7 support and platform rules set the operating bar that the build-out has to clear.
The Package Visa also sits inside a wider run of Saudi visa reforms. Saudi Arabia’s recent 90-day visa-free travel deal with Russia sits in the same direction, lowering entry friction for visitors from new origin markets. The pilot, in that context, is the next step in a stack that already includes the tourist e-Visa, visa on arrival, and the Stopover Transit Visa.
The Ministry has not set a date for the pilot to end. The Package Visa is a pilot, the Ministry said, and any move to a permanent programme, with more countries and more providers, is gated on the data the pilot generates.
