ArabiaTour.com Tourism Research Dataset

RESEARCH CUTOFF: 2026-09-14

CONTENTS
ArabiaTour_country_profiles.csv — 10 country records, 125 columns. Includes five original paragraphs per country, tourism figures and definitions, GDP, visa guidance, costs, five destinations with airports and sights, five hotel references, and source links.
ArabiaTour_destinations.csv — 50 records, five editorial destination selections per country. Contains sights, primary/alternative airports, IATA codes, access notes, hotel links, and warnings.
ArabiaTour_hotels.csv — 50 records, five editorial accommodation references per country. Contains actual location, property type, rationale, official URL, and operating-status limitations. Not every hotel is in one of the five selected destinations.
ArabiaTour_sources.csv — 139 source records with IDs, publishers, titles, dates when known, URLs, and limitations.
ArabiaTour_data_dictionary.csv — 179 column definitions across the four data files.
ArabiaTour_validation.json — File counts, integrity checks, and SHA-256 checksums.

SCOPE AND ORDER
The dataset covers exactly Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon, Turkey (Türkiye), Bahrain, and Iraq. scope_order preserves that requested order. It is not a statistically verified ranking of the Middle East's ten most visited countries. The five destinations and five hotels in each country are editorial selections, not measured visitation or quality ranks. Some selected places are regions, archaeological areas, or islands rather than cities.

TOURISM MEASUREMENT
Always retain tourism_visits_year, tourism_metric, tourism_value_qualifier, tourism_data_confidence, and tourism_comparability_note alongside tourism_visits. The series differ in year and coverage. Türkiye's measure includes non-resident Turkish citizens; Bahrain's cited measure is overnight visitors; the UAE figure is more than 29 million in 2024, not a precise 2025 estimate. Kuwait's 2024 figure is an attributed secondary report whose statistical definition remains unresolved. A comparable national Iraq total was not verified and is blank, not zero. Domestic visits, hotel guests, pilgrimage crowds, regional totals, and airport passenger movements have not been silently substituted for national international tourism.

GDP
GDP is nominal annual GDP at current USD prices, recorded in billions, not PPP GDP, tourism GDP, a current market valuation, or a 2026 forecast. GDP and GDP-per-capita years are explicit and may differ from the tourism year. Values reflect the rounding displayed by World Bank. Saudi Arabia and Türkiye were displayed in trillions, so their converted billion values do not imply exact billion-dollar precision.

COSTS
Daily ranges are independent, low-confidence editorial planning assumptions, not a live rate survey or a quoted tour package. They are USD per person per day assuming two adults share a double room, with ordinary accommodation, meals, local ground transport, and routine sightseeing within the chosen tier. The external traveler-spending pages are contextual references, not the reproducible mathematical basis for the bands. No comparable benchmark is cited for Kuwait or Lebanon. Do not market these assumptions as researched live prices.
International airfare, visa charges, insurance, long intercity transfers or flights, premium excursions, balloon flights, diving, private security, shopping, and major-event premiums are excluded. Luxury flagship hotels can exceed even the luxury range. Seven-day midrange amounts equal the daily endpoints multiplied by seven; they do not price a specific multi-city itinerary. Lebanon's figures are only an ordinary-service baseline where access is feasible. Iraq is intentionally unpriced: essential travel requires a tailored quotation accounting for transport, permissions, insurance, contingency, and any security requirements.

VISAS AND SECURITY
No traveler nationality or travel dates were supplied. Visa information is therefore a route overview, not an individual eligibility decision. Nationality, passport type, residence, purpose, and entry history can change the applicable rules. Use the official links and obtain approval where required. Visa validity must not be confused with allowed stay. Saudi religious access, Hajj permission, Qatar's nationality-specific hotel conditions, and the distinction between federal Iraq and Kurdistan Region permission require particular attention.
Fee examples are explicitly scoped: Egypt's official eVisa FAQ displayed USD 30 single / USD 65 multiple; the UAE amounts are Dubai service base fees with extras; the Iraq USD 160 example is British-passport federal-Iraq guidance, not a fee for every nationality. Other uncertain fees are not invented.
The UK FCDO advisory is used as a consistent cited reference, not a universal legal ban or a substitute for the traveler's own government and insurer. Warnings are geographic and can change quickly. Iraq's five selected areas and Lebanon's Baalbek are not routine leisure recommendations. A hotel website, tourism promotion, heritage listing, issued visa, or advertised flight does not establish safe access. Recheck advice, insurance acceptance, flights, entry rules, site opening, and cancellation conditions before booking and again before departure.

HOTELS, AIRPORTS, AND ATTRACTIONS
Hotel identity is supported by official property/operator pages, but live room inventory, nightly rates, star classifications, and safety were not independently audited. Old Cataract's current management and renovation are flagged. Byblos Sur Mer is excluded because its official site states temporary closure. The Erbil International website has template artifacts, so operational details need direct confirmation. No hotel was invented for a destination with an unresolved local shortlist.
Airport names and IATA codes use the community-maintained OurAirports directory with separately sourced operational warnings where available. The closest local airport is not always the practical international gateway. Islands require boats, mountain/desert destinations may require specialized transfers, and regional hotels may be staging bases rather than onsite accommodation. Site lists do not promise admission or opening. Suggested seasons, lengths, and transport choices are editorial planning judgments, not forecasts or timetables.

IMPORTING AND JOINING
All CSVs are comma-delimited, fully quoted, UTF-8 with BOM, and use a header row. Text lists use ' | ' where stated. The combined summary cell contains five paragraphs separated by blank lines; those paragraphs also appear as separate columns for CMS use. Embedded newlines are valid CSV: use an actual CSV reader, not a physical-line splitter. In Excel, import via Data > From Text/CSV with UTF-8 and comma delimiter. Enable wrap text for long prose; do not infer missing numbers as zero.
Join country tables on country_iso2, destination hotel examples on example_hotel_id = hotel_id, and citation keys on source_id. source_ids fields may contain several pipe-separated keys. Dates are YYYY-MM-DD; unavailable publication dates are blank. Empty cells mean not verified, unavailable, not applicable, or intentionally not estimated. There are 4,211 words across the 50 original summary paragraphs; the combined and individual summary columns intentionally duplicate the same prose.

VALIDATION
The export was checked for ten unique countries, five destinations and five hotel references per country, five substantial paragraphs per country, valid source references, three-letter primary airport codes, correct seven-day arithmetic, consistent columns, CSV round-trip preservation, and spreadsheet formula-injection prefixes. These are structural checks, not proof that every dynamic external page will remain current. No website deployment, booking, or purchase was performed.