Saudi Outbound Launches at WTM Spotlight Riyadh 2026
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, September 15, 2026 / TRAVELINDEX / Saudi Outbound, a new marketing and advisory agency dedicated to the Saudi outbound travel market, launched at WTM Spotlight Riyadh 2026. Founder Dr. Jens Thraenhart opened the event’s outbound travel programming on the Future Stage on Wednesday, Sept. 9, with a keynote titled “Opening Remarks: The Outbound Opportunity, Forecast 2026-2030,” followed by the “Insights & Trends of the Saudi Traveller” report launch by Almosafer CEO Muzzammil Ahussain.
Saudi Outbound is a venture of Chameleon Strategies, a UN Tourism Affiliate Member founded in 1999. The agency works with tourism boards, hotel groups, cruise lines, attractions and travel companies that want a strategy built specifically for Saudi travelers, rather than one adapted from broader Gulf or Middle East marketing plans.
Saudi outbound travel spending reached approximately SAR 110.4 billion (about USD 29.4 billion) in 2025, up 7 percent year on year, according to Saudi Central Bank data.
“Most organizations that want to reach Saudi travelers start with a strategy built for the Gulf region as a whole, and that’s the first mistake,” said Dr. Thraenhart. “Saudi Arabia is its own market, distinct from the rest of the Gulf, and it’s changing faster than almost any other source market we track. It’s also not one audience. The market breaks down into segments with different spending power, motivations and travel patterns, and a campaign built for one segment often misses the rest. Vision 2030 has raised what Saudi travelers expect from their own country, and they carry those expectations with them when they go abroad. The destinations getting real results are the ones that plan around all of that, not around a generic Gulf playbook.”
Dr. Fahad Mohammed Alhuqbani, Academic Professor at King Saud University in Riyadh, is contributing a foreword to the forthcoming handbook. “We cannot speak of a single type of Saudi traveler, but rather of an increasingly experienced market with diverse interests, motivations and expectations,” he wrote. “Saudi outbound tourism should be viewed not merely as a market with potential, but as an evolving market that is likely to play an increasingly important role in global tourism.”
Saudi Outbound’s market analysis sorts international destinations into four groups based on current Saudi traveler demand and growth potential: incumbent destinations, which call for defending share and premiumizing the offer; prime challengers, where the opportunity is to capture demand and scale quickly; emerging opportunities, which call for building awareness and nurturing early demand; and niche plays, best approached by testing before committing significant budget. The firm recommends destinations weight their marketing investment accordingly rather than spreading it evenly.
Saudi Outbound provides three core services: strategic development, including market entry strategy, positioning and partnership identification; implementation support, including marketing campaigns, digital and social media programs, and staff training; and ongoing advisory, including market intelligence, campaign performance analysis and partnership management.
The agency also operates the Saudi Outbound Academy, an online training and certification platform for destinations, hotels, attractions, destination management companies and travel companies, and runs the Saudi Outbound Tourism Awards (SOTA), with a 2026 awards cycle now underway for tourism boards, hotel groups, airlines, cruise lines and attractions that market most effectively to Saudi travelers.
Dr. Thraenhart is also publishing The Saudi Outbound Travel Opportunity Handbook, based on his time in the Kingdom and more than two decades in international tourism. An executive summary is available for download, with a waitlist for the complete handbook, scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2026.
About Dr. Jens Thraenhart
Dr. Jens Thraenhart is CEO of Chameleon Strategies and a former advisor to the Saudi Tourism Authority (2024-2026). He first worked in Saudi Arabia’s tourism sector in 2012, seven years before the Kingdom opened to international tourism, and has since traveled extensively throughout the country, from Riyadh and Jeddah to AlUla, Madinah, and the Aseer region. His earlier roles include CEO of Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc., Executive Director of the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office, co-founder of Dragon Trail, and senior positions at Destination Canada and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. He holds a doctorate from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a master’s degree from Cornell University, and serves as a Board Director of the UN Tourism Affiliate Members Board, having previously served as its 2nd Vice Chair. He is publishing The Saudi Outbound Travel Opportunity and is the author of The Passion Tourism Economy. The Passion Tourism Economy. More information is available at thraenhart.com and BalancedTourism.com.
About Saudi Outbound
Saudi Outbound is a specialized marketing and advisory agency that helps international tourism organizations understand, attract and host travelers from Saudi Arabia. A venture of Chameleon Strategies, the agency combines international tourism experience with direct, on-the-ground work in the Saudi market.
About Chameleon Strategies
Chameleon Strategies is a tourism strategy and marketing consultancy and a UN Tourism Affiliate Member, founded in 1999. The firm operates and incubates a portfolio of ventures across the travel and tourism space, including Saudi Outbound, Destinspire, TourismCampaigns[dot]com, Innovation.travel, Asia Travel Trends, Journistic, High-Yield Tourism, Passion Explorer, and others.