It is illegal to offer travel and tourism services without an SCTA license, Al-Madinah newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The inspectors found that licenses carried by the offices were for general services and that Asian workers were operating the agencies when the documents stated they were supposed to be run by Saudi citizens.

The workers said they undertook ticket bookings, sales, hotel bookings and conducted tours in collaboration with agencies carrying SCTA licenses for a commission.

SCTA officials said they planned more inspections in the neighborhood with the help of security forces to discover if more violators of license regulations were operating there.

In the meantime, a recent study projected that the value of tourism in the Kingdom is set to cross the SR219 billion mark by 2020. The number of tours that year is estimated at more than 86 million, according to the study from the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The study found that value-added services from travel and tour agencies represented 2.1 percent of total value-added services from the sector as a whole.

The study also said Riyadh received 17.1 percent of the sector’s total revenue.

The number of direct jobs in the travel and tourism sector was 9,153 in 2009, with Saudis accounting for 29.7 percent.

Another finding of the study was that 91 percent of the travel agencies had less than SR1 million capital and 85 percent of them did not have their own offices but operated in rented buildings. Riyadh had 59 percent of travel and tour agencies in the Kingdom.

The study said a major problem faced by travel and tourism agencies was the bureaucratic delays in getting visas and other government-related matters. Another issue was the stiff competition between agencies.

The preference of airlines and hotels to deal with customers directly also posed a threat to the operations of travel agencies, the study pointed out.