DUBAI: Saudi Arabia reported this week that the country received over 2.9 million foreign tourists to the country during the first quarter of the year. Those visitors also spent nearly $2 billion in the country, a report published by the country's Tourism Information and Research Center (MAS) said. “The total of domestic tourists in the same period reached about five million, who spent about SR 7.4 billion," the report said. MAS also reported that 4.5 million tourists spent their vacation outside the Kingdom and spent SR 17 billion. The MAS report indicated that the 2.9 million inbound tourists represented about 77 percent of total tourists, with 23 percent of them spending only one night. March saw the largest number of trips reaching 1 million compared to the first quarter of 2011. The largest number of tourists arrived from Middle Eastern countries, which accounted for 1.6 million of tourists, followed by South Asia reporting 360,000 tourists, then European countries with 86,000, African countries with 83,000, and East Asia and Pacific Ocean with 62,000 combined. Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Egypt occupy the first 5 positions in terms of the number of tourists sent to the Kingdom during the first quarter of 2012.