Lebanon hopes to achieve another record tourism season in 2010

By Malek Mohammed Misbah in Beirut
For Al-Shorfa.com
2010-03-18

[JOSEPH BARRAK/AFP/Getty Images] Canadians play volleyball at the Edde Sands resort in the northern Lebanese port of Byblos.

The Association of Travel and Tourist Agents in Lebanon (ATTAL) is witnessing an unusually high level of activity these days with delegations constantly arriving and leaving its office.

The president of the association, Jean Abboud, and its manager, Ghassan Hitti, say they hope to achieve a better season in 2010 than in 2009 when Lebanon recorded two million tourists, an unprecedented number of visitors since the 1970s, before the Lebanese civil war broke out.

In a report published last week, the World Tourism Organization (WTO) noted that Lebanon recorded the highest growth rate worldwide in 2009 in terms of tourist numbers.

Preliminary figures showed that the number of tourists grew by 39% last year compared with 2008 in Lebanon. Meanwhile, there was a contraction in the tourism sector by 4.3% worldwide, 5.4% in developed countries and 3% in developing countries.

Osta Abu Rejaili, an expert in the tourism sector and the mayor of Bhamdoun Al-Mhatta, one of the most important summer destinations in Lebanon's mountain region, told Al-Shorfa, "We have been through one of the best tourism seasons, and these are confirmed numbers. We intend to make further progress in the next season."

He added, "There is no doubt this is the beginning, and we hope that Lebanon will continue to get better, especially after the stabilisation of the political situation and especially that issues are now being resolved within the constitutional institutions. This proves that the time has come for Lebanon's tourism sector to bloom, given that it has very important and distinctive features and attractions."

Meanwhile, ATTAL's Hitti told Al-Shorfa about the huge workshop that the tourism association is organizing, during which tourism representatives from different countries meet to exchange information, brochures and prices about their respective country's tourism destinations.

He said, "This is it. We must make our move forward. Lebanon has missed a lot as a tourist destination because of the events and crises that hit the country, and we must start making up for that. We have had a very successful season with Lebanon accommodating two million tourists, but this is just the beginning. We need these numbers to grow so that the country can grow as well."

In collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism, ATTAL started a campaign to promote Lebanon as a tourist destination. So far, it has received representatives from agencies and tourism offices in a number of neighbouring and distant countries such as Russia, Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey, and provided them with information on the diverse tourist attractions in Lebanon.

"Such meetings with foreign delegations were held only once every three to four months in the past. Now, it's about every week," Hitti said.

In the meantime, Abu Rejaili noted the significance of the foreign visits that President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri undertook.

"After the visit of President Michel Suleiman to Saudi Arabia and the visit of Prime Minister Al-Hariri to Kuwait during the first week of March, we received hundreds of calls from the Gulf inquiring about houses, apartments, hotels, and the investment activities, which proves that Lebanon enjoys a great deal of confidence."

He added, "The statistics also show that 160,000 people have entered the country during the month of February, although February has only 28 days, and it is a rainy and snowy month. If this is any indication, it shows that Lebanon has become a weekend destination for Gulf citizens and Lebanese living abroad. Many are now seizing upon any opportunity to come to Lebanon where they are met with warm hospitality and good service as well as simplified entry procedures and security."

Abu Rejaili is counting on the agreements that Lebanon signed with neighbouring countries, and most recently with Turkey, to eliminate visa requirements.

"When the entry visa requirement was removed between Lebanon and Jordan last year, the percentage of Jordanian travellers to Lebanon was the highest, followed by Iraqis, Saudis and Kuwaitis," he said.

Arab tourists represented the majority of tourists to Lebanon during the last year, with their numbers exceeding 800,000 out of the 2 million people who visited Lebanon.

According to Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud, "The number will increase this year with the intense marketing campaign for promoting Lebanon in the Arab countries as well as other countries around the world."

Tourists from the Gulf region last year included 173,290 Saudis, 106,560 Iraqis, 102,570 Kuwaitis, 42,970 Emiratis, 25,210 Bahrainis and 19,350 Qataris, Abboud said.

He added, "Based on the current indications in the tourism sector, the year 2009 has surpassed the year 1974 in terms of the number of tourists travelling to Lebanon, which reached 1.4 million tourists in 1974. However, the revenues of the tourism industry back then constituted 25% of the gross domestic product, while today it is less that 7%."

Abboud called for "working towards developing tourism in the different Lebanese regions so that the hotels there could benefit from the boom in the tourism industry."

"Hotel reservations in the capital are at 100% while in the mountainous regions close to Beirut the occupancy rate is 20%," he said, adding that "around $6 to $7 billion are injected into the Lebanese economy every year through the tourism sector."

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