Authorities expect domestic tourism to be even more extensive than official figures suggest.

Sources had previously announced that domestic tourism is on the uptrend, with a total number of 23.8 million domestic tourist trips recorded across the Kingdom last year, up from 19 million the previous year.

“Yet the total number could be even higher since there were many families and individuals who traveled privately and were therefore unrecorded,” Awad El-Haj, the manager of a furnished apartment in the Suleimania district in the Saudi capital, told Arab News on Wednesday.

“The official figures were issued by the government through the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA),” he said. The data was gathered from travel agencies and other allied sectors in the industry.

El-Haj said that there are families or individuals who travel and stay with relatives or friends in Jeddah or Alkhobar.

He added that their travel was not officially recorded and therefore not included in the total number of domestic travelers last year as recorded by travel agents and tourism authorities.

Anter Ibrahim, a supervisor at the 40-room Taleen Furnished Apartments, added that these travelers also spent money on various things, but that their expenses were not officially recorded.

He said that many of the travelers to Alkhobar, for instance, caught fish which they cooked and ate or bought the catch of others, but that no receipts were issued, so their expenses were not officially recorded.

“The amount spent by a family or individual domestic traveler may be not that much. However, if you put together the total expenses of several families and individuals who traveled in their private capacity last year, the amount is considerable indeed,” he said.

He noted that a report recently stated that domestic traveler expenses last year were pegged at SR28 billion, but that “this figure could be much bigger if all the expenses of the families or individuals who traveled in their private capacity had been recorded.”

Some 203,200 people are employed in the local tourism industry.