Saudi travel sector ‘optimistic’ about post-pandemic future

Saudi travel sector ‘optimistic’ about post-pandemic future

RIYADH: Nearly half of those surveyed for a recent YouGov poll in Saudi Arabia said they intended to travel internationally in 2021 once travel restrictions were lifted in May. The president of travel services firm Kanoo Travel said he was optimistic about the future of the industry as a result, despite the ups and downs that the sector had experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. "We at Kanoo are here for the long run," Nabeel Kanoo told Arab News. "We are quite optimistic about the tourism and travel sector in Saudi Arabia, and it's only going to get much better." While the global situation meant that interest in international travel waned significantly over the past year, domestic travel increased by 11 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, leading travel companies in the Kingdom to reevaluate, reassess, and use the knowledge they had acquired to provide clients with better services. "For us at Kanoo, like all the other major organizations in Saudi Arabia, we have gone through a difficult but interesting time during COVID," he said. "It gave us time to relook at ourselves, realign ourselves and try to be better focused for the future. It was difficult in the beginning