30 Million Umrah Pilgrims.. But Who Owns the Journey?

✍️Islam Zween

For years, we have tracked the growth in the number of Umrah pilgrims arriving in Saudi Arabia as the clearest indicator of how the Umrah market is developing. With the target of 30 million pilgrims from abroad by 2030, the number itself has become an easy yardstick of success.

But while reading market data this week, I was struck by the fact that 18.03 million Umrah pilgrims arrived from abroad in 2025, while 15.03 million visas were issued, of which only 12.44 million were Umrah visas. The gap matters, because it means we are not talking about 18 million customers who all bought their trip the same way.

Some bought a full package from a travel agent in their home country; some entered on a different visa and arranged the trip themselves; and others booked through a global platform, a Saudi company or the Nusuk platform.

The Ministry of Hajj and Umrah itself confirms that performing Umrah is no longer restricted to Umrah visa holders, and is now permitted on tourist, visit and work visas.

Although these different routes ultimately feed into the same headcount, producing a single figure for pilgrim numbers, their financial behaviour differs fundamentally. The cash flows that accompany pilgrims' spending do not pass through the same distribution channels.

Instead, the economic value is split among global booking platforms, traditional agents and direct service providers, depending on the route each pilgrim chose to enter by.
The Egyptian market is the clearest example of this structural shift.

In 2024, some 2.76 million Egyptians performed Umrah, yet only 30% of them (about 841,000) entered on a dedicated Umrah visa, according to the Pilgrim Experience Program report.

A notable shift followed in 2025, when the number of Umrah visas issued to Egyptians jumped to about 1.37 million, up 58% on the revised 2024 figures published in the 2025 report.

At first glance, this looks like huge growth in the Egyptian market, but that reading may be mistaken given the major regulatory changes that year.

Chief among them was the requirement for Umrah companies and overseas agents to register contracts and accommodation arrangements on the Nusuk Masar platform as a precondition for visa issuance, alongside tighter Egyptian rules channelling Umrah trips through licensed companies.

The case for this regulatory explanation is strengthened by the relative decline in the total number of Egyptian Umrah pilgrims in 2025, according to the same statistical series.

This points to pilgrims switching from one visa category to another rather than an influx of new arrivals, which limits how conclusively the current data can establish the nature of this growth.

This is not a marginal statistical observation. It is the analytical foundation of our study on the economics of the Umrah sector, because it reopens an important question about how the market's efficiency and growth should really be measured: is it the absolute rise in the number of people performing the rites, or the deeper shifts in how they enter the country, how they book and where their spending goes?

Paradoxically, this shift, if confirmed, means a move into the licensed-agent channel rather than out of it.

An Egyptian's Umrah visa passes through a licensed Egyptian travel company and then a Saudi Umrah company on the Nusuk Masar platform, whereas those arriving on visit visas mostly arranged their trips outside this channel.

This becomes all the more important when we look at which companies benefit from market growth. For Jabal Omar Development, what matters most is that the pilgrim reaches Makkah, stays in one of the company's hotels, and the room rate they pay.

For Seera Group, the benefit depends more on the services that pass through the group's companies, whether booking, accommodation or transport. The same pilgrim may therefore be part of demand growth at both companies, but the revenue they leave with each is different.

This does not necessarily mean the travel agent will disappear as direct booking expands in the markets where it is available. There will still be people who need someone to arrange their trip, or to help them change a booking, get a refund or solve a problem while travelling.

What is likely to change is the value of that intermediation, and how much pilgrims will be willing to pay for it once they can buy a larger part of the trip themselves. This, in my view, is what makes the 30 million target more interesting than simply hitting the number.

Thirty million pilgrims will create greater demand for hotels, flights, transport and dozens of other services, but they will not necessarily be thirty million customers for the market as we have known it.

We may reach the target while, along the way, the companies that win the bookings, and each party's share of what pilgrims spend, change.

Saudi Arabia is already on course for 30 million Umrah pilgrims, but the number alone will not tell us how big the market is in the way we once imagined.

The question is no longer just how many people performed Umrah, but how they came, how they booked, how much they spent and, most importantly, who ended up with their money?

Click here to read the full study

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