Each mark is one Saudi tourism signal. Distance from the centre is time: inner ring is live now, the middle is building, the outer ring is the 2030+ horizon. Mark size is the scale of the bet. Click any mark, or any row below, to open its signal file.
Giga-projects
Mega-events
Hospitality & Aviation
Faith Travel
Live wireSignalIQ × GDELT BigQuery · Arabic + English press volume
Total coverage · 60d
6.7K
▼ −7.2% 7d
Giga-projects · 60d
1.0K
▼ −25.0% 7d
Mega-events · 60d
812
▼ −56.8% 7d
Hospitality & Aviation · 60d
1.3K
▼ −3.4% 7d
Faith Travel · 60d
3.6K
▲ +19.9% 7d
Heating up now
13 / 33
▲ 2034 world cup +100%
Trending in the Saudi storymomentum · 30d
Rising and quiet is the early window. Rising and loud means enter fast, with a data angle.
1
Mega-events2034 world cup
+100%
2
Mega-eventsesports world cup
+100%
3
Mega-eventssaudi arabian grand prix
+100%
4
Mega-eventssoundstorm
+100%
5
Faith Travelumrah
+88.3%
6
Faith Travelnusuk
+85.2%
7
Hospitality & Aviationking salman international airport
+63.6%
8
Mega-eventsriyadh season
+48.0%
Quiet · check the demandfewest articles first
Quiet means few articles, not no interest. The test: is reality (capital, visitors, a dated catalyst) ahead of the coverage? If yes, whitespace you can own; if no, dormant. Counts are exact-phrase, so variants can undercount, and under 12 articles a trend percentage is noise, so we say low sample instead.
Hospitality & Aviationsaudi hotelWHITESPACE
vs 94,500 rooms in the active pipeline; 358K long-term
0 articles · low sample
Hospitality & Aviationsaudi hotelsWHITESPACE
vs 94,500 rooms in the active pipeline; 358K long-term
0 articles · low sample
Mega-eventssharqiah seasonDORMANT
0 articles · low sample
Mega-eventssaudi grand prixRECALIBRATING
vs Jeddah hosts until the Qiddiya circuit is ready
2 articles · low sample
Giga-projectssoudah peaksWHITESPACE
vs $7.7B plan; 2M visitors/yr by 2033
2 articles · low sample
Mega-eventsjeddah seasonWHITESPACE
vs 1.7M+ visitors in 2024; 6M at peak (2022)
4 articles · low sample
Hospitality & Aviationcruise saudiWHITESPACE
vs 140K+ guests in year one; 1.3M/yr target by 2035
6 articles · low sample
Giga-projectsmukaabRECALIBRATING
vs 19 km² downtown anchored by the 400m Mukaab
9 articles · low sample
Curated layer as of 24 Jul 2026 · SignalIQ × GDELT BigQuery · data as of 2026-08-07VISION 2030 TARGET · 150M visits/yr (70M international + 80M domestic) · Saudi Tourism Authority ↗
§ 02
The window · how ownable gets called
Three rules, one read. Volume says how crowded a story is (the boundary is this set’s median). Momentum says which way it is moving. Demand, the committed capital, real visitors, and dated catalysts in each signal file, says whether quiet means opportunity or nothing. Quiet plus demand is whitespace you can own. Loud plus rising is a newsjack you enter fast, with data. Loud plus flat means wait for the next catalyst. Think of a quiet topic with real demand like a stock with strong revenue and no analyst coverage: the silence is a lag you can profit from, not a verdict on the company.
EARLY WINDOW quiet and rising: own it nowWHITESPACE demand is ahead of coverageNEWSJACK crowded and rising: enter fast, data angle requiredLATE crowded and flat: wait for the next catalystDORMANT quiet with no demand signal on fileRECALIBRATING story in flux: watch, do not call it
One topic is tracked deliberately as a calibration control: sharqiah season (i), a 2019 Saudi Season with no announced return. It should read DORMANT, and in an open market scan most quiet topics would look like it. Everything else here was curated because reality is moving in it. Dots under 12 articles: the momentum axis is noise-prone there, and verdicts ignore it.
§ 03The size of the prize
Tourism spending, 2025 · record
SAR 304B
+7% vs 2024
Inbound SAR 176.6B · domestic SAR 127.1B · travel-account surplus SAR 49.4B
Read this first.This is a curated intelligence layer: official statistics and named industry reports, compiled 24 Jul 2026, each figure linked to its source. Status badges reflect July 2026 news activity, assessed editorially. The recalibrations are shown as-is (NEOM’s pause, the Mukaab retender, the 2026 F1 and Esports World Cup moves) because a radar that only blinks green is decoration, not intelligence. The daily-refreshing SignalIQ wire adds Arabic and English press volume per topic in the live-wire band below.
§ 04Ownable narratives · the coverage gaps
The angles nobody in this market has claimed yet.
Under-covered relative to their weight, as of July 2026. In earned media the gap is the opportunity: these are the stories a speaker, a destination, or a brand can still own.
GAP 01 → feeds talk 01
Answer-engine visibility for Saudi destinations
GMTI 2026's own headline says 80% of Muslim travelers plan with AI tools, yet nobody audits how Saudi destinations actually surface in ChatGPT-era answers, or what DMOs should do about it. The conversation exists; the Saudi chapter is unclaimed.
Arabic is documented as underrepresented in AI training data, and GCC Arabic-LLM building is covered as a tech story, but nobody connects it to tourism and Umrah discovery content in Arabic. A bilingual visibility strategy is open territory.
Coverage tracks the paid side (KSA digital ad spend heading to ~$4.68B in 2026), but there is almost no analysis of earned share-of-voice for NEOM, Red Sea Global or Diriyah. The measurement story is unowned.
Expo 2030 and 2034 World Cup coverage is announcement-driven; 'legacy' framing mostly borrows Qatar comparisons. Measurable Saudi legacy-and-ROI narratives are wide open, and organisers will need them.
The 'safest G20 country for solo female travelers' claim circulates via SEO blogs, not credible first-person earned media. The perception-vs-reality gap is unclaimed territory for whoever reports it properly.
Sessions built on sourced market intelligence, not recycled slideware.
Talk 01
When Travelers Ask ChatGPT Where to Go
Earned Media for Saudi Tourism | the session pitched to WTM Spotlight Riyadh
80% of Muslim travelers now plan with AI tools (GMTI 2026). What do the answer engines actually say about AlUla, Diriyah, the Red Sea, in English and in Arabic, and how does a destination take control of it? Live audits on stage.
KeynoteMasterclass
Built on: GMTI 2026 · SGIE 2025/26 · live answer-engine audits
Talk 02
The Arabic AI Gap
Getting the Kingdom's story into the machines
Arabic is underrepresented in the systems travelers increasingly ask first. The fix is a content and earned-media strategy, not just a model problem, and tourism is the sector with the most to win.
KeynotePanel
Built on: Arabic-LLM research · GDELT 65-language press data
Talk 03
Earned, Not Bought
Share-of-voice strategy for giga-projects
Ad spend is measured to the dirham; earned coverage mostly isn't. A working session on measuring narrative momentum and coverage gaps for destination brands, using the same radar methodology behind this page.
MasterclassWorkshop
Built on: this radar's coverage-gap panel · SignalIQ methodology
Talk 04
After the Opening Ceremony
Legacy coverage playbooks for Expo 2030 & the 2034 World Cup
The announcement cycle is easy; the decade after is the reputation. How organisers and sponsors build legacy narratives that survive scrutiny, starting eight years out.
KeynotePanel
Built on: Expo 2030 & WC-2034 signal files above
The session this radar powers
When Travelers Ask ChatGPT Where to Go
Earned media for Saudi tourism: the keynote, workshop, and panel built on this radar’s live data. Tuned for DMOs, hotels, airlines, and travel marketers.
Earned-media strategist and builder of the EMOS suite (SignalIQ, PressIQ, CoverageIQ, FactCheckIQ). 300+ clients, mostly American brands, plus Gulf-government work through DinarStandard. Profiled as a case study in Harvard Business Review, quoted in Forbes (US); bylines in Forbes Middle East. Available for keynotes, masterclasses, and panels across KSA, Sep-Nov 2026.
Method: curated layer compiled 24 Jul 2026 from official statistics and named reports. Live layer: SignalIQ × GDELT Web News NGrams via BigQuery, refreshed daily. †The 2019 inbound-visitor basis varies across official series.