Tourism was the fastest growing industry in the 2000s. Since the late 1990s, the government has been attracting and providing facilities for foreign tourists. The Ministry of Culture established a special tourism office to promote Bahrain as a destination for international conferences, sporting events and recreational activities.
One of the government’s major successes has been the inclusion of Bahrain in an international Grand Prix – the 2004 Formula One Grand Prix was the first of its kind in the Middle East, achieving its goal of putting the Kingdom in the global spotlight.
During the same period, construction began in Bahrain for luxury recreational resorts, including multi-million dollar projects such as Pearl Island and the artificial Surf Island, the Durrat Al Bahrain project “self-sufficient city” on the southern tip of the island and the Den Desert Resort & Spa at its centre, and large-scale tourism development in the Hiwar Archipelago.
By 2007, 5.2 million people were visiting Bahrain annually for meetings and recreation. Most of them (94%) were from other Arab countries, and of the remaining 6%, 72% were European, 13% were American, and 12% were non-Arab Asian. Of these visitors, 1.3 million stayed in the country’s 96 hotels for an average of 1.9 days, with most of them being Saudis visiting for the weekend.
The most striking aspect of tourism in Bahrain is its tendency to ignore the country’s cultural heritage. Bahrain’s flagship cultural institution, the Bahrain National Museum, received 87,000 visitors in 2006, yet went unnoticed. Other museums receive only a few thousand visitors per year. Al Aline Wildlife Park is the fastest growing “official” tourist attraction, receiving 72,000 visitors in 2006.
The Arab Spring unrest has significantly slowed tourism in the country: the 2011 Formula One Grand Prix was cancelled along with other related tourist events, some cruise ships stopped calling at Bahrain’s ports, and restaurants, shops and taxis lost customers.
Despite this, over 100 five- and four-star hotels were added in the next five years.As part of the Bahraini government’s efforts to improve the performance of the tourism sector, Vatel Hotel & Tourism Business School, offering a bachelor’s degree in international hospitality management, opened in October 2018.
The tourism sector’s contribution to GDP is estimated at 7 percent. Excluding residents and non-tourists, Bahrain receives an average of 11.4 million tourist visitors, of which 65 percent are day trippers (without overnight stays) and an average of 35 percent stay overnight or more.
The coronavirus pandemic has affected many sectors of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s economy, most notably the fall in oil prices accompanied by falling demand and a months-long economic shutdown in 2020, which again occurred in the first quarter of 2021 as the number of casualties in the country increased.
The tourism sector has been one of the sectors adversely affected by the pandemic, with Bahrain in particular heavily reliant on visitors from the Gulf and beyond. Yet the long period of airspace closure, followed by a reopening subject to ongoing testing, led most tourists to cancel plans to visit during that period.
Due to the pandemic, tourist numbers fell to about 1.9 million in 2020, and total tourism revenues in 2020 fell 80%, from 1.5 million dinars (about $3.98 million) to 300,000 dinars (about $800,000).
The Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) estimated that the number of tourists passing through the King Fahd Bridge, which connects Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, fell 84% in 2020 compared to 2019 after it was temporarily closed in March as a virus prevention measure.
The BCCI observed that the pandemic had disrupted the tourism sector with social restrictions, paralysed airport traffic and the complete closure of the border with Saudi Arabia for several months.
From the start of the pandemic through January 2021, various industries in the tourism sector have suffered average daily losses of 4 million dinars ($10.6 million) and monthly losses of 108 million dinars ($268.5 million). In addition, losses were incurred due to the cancellation or postponement of all 14 exhibitions and events scheduled between March 2020 and March 2021.
