The Effectiveness of Tourism in KSA Using Mobile App During COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Tourism in Saudi Arabia varies to include the most attractive and active religious tourism due to the presence of the Two Holy Mosques, eco-tourism, and business tourism. Global tourism in Saudi Arabia has a more than distinctive character, for example, Saudi Arabia has many coastal destinations, and it has green spaces that cover its mountains, plains, and countless parks. In addition to many heritages, archaeological sites, and markets that extend Some of them date back to the pre-Islamic era. In recent years, the Government has developed the tourist areas in the Kingdom and optimized its services and facilities to attract the largest number of tourists from different countries. According to the government, the travel and tourism sector would be one of the most hit by the COVID-19 epidemic, with an expected 60–80 percent drop in international tourism in 2020. They acknowledge that COVID-19 may cause a paradigm change in the travel and tourism industry. Therefore, there are many efforts and support are targeting this sector to reach the indicators of tourism to the level of vision of 2030. With the increase of using mobiles globally, it has become increasingly necessary for tourists to use mobile apps for tourism. This research study proposes a mobile tourist app, it offers a variety of services to consumers including 1) providing the tourist with the nearest touristic locations to his present location, 2) providing the tourist with all information about nearest shopping centers, restaurants, coffee shops, hospitals, festivals, and malls, 3) offers hotel, restaurant, and movie theatre bookings to tourists. The paper shows a promising impact on using the mobile app for tourism. The research study uses Cronbach's alpha to assess the stability and validity of the questionnaire's content and step-wise multiple linear regression analysis and Spearman correlation to analyze the influence of the related factors on the outcome.