Absent tourists pass harsh judgment on Lebanon
Posted by tearsforlebanon on April 27, 2007
Ministry reports traffic down 27 percent year-on-year in first quarter of 2007
BEIRUT: Tourist traffic to Lebanon in this year’s first quarter took a predictable nosedive compared to last year, while industry insiders and a Tourism Ministry official expressed pessimism for the coming summer season. The ministry recorded about 180,000 visitors for the first three months of 2007, a drop of almost 27 percent from the roughly 246,000 guests in the first quarter of 2006, according to statistics released by the ministry on Thursday.
“After the war and with all the political issues going on, we are losing – and we are going to lose more and more if we are going to have the same situation in the country,” Nada Sardouk, director general of the Tourism Ministry, told The Daily Star on Thursday.
“We are not optimistic.”
The flow of tourists had begun to rise last autumn after the summer war with Israel, but the November 21 assassination of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel drove visitors away and the opposition taking up residence Downtown on December 1 and related tensions have deterred them ever since.
“After the assassination of Gemayel, the occupancy was eliminated,” said Malek Nabhan, shift leader at the Bella Riva Hotel in Manara. “The assassination of Gemayel was catastrophic for all hotels.”
The Bella Riva registered 15 percent occupancy for 2007’s first three months, less than one-quarter of the 60-70 percent rate in the same period last year. The Berkeley Hotel in Hamra reported a drop of 45 percent in the occupancy rate for the first quarter year-on-year, while Hamra’s Plaza Hotel also saw its number of guests plummet by about 50 percent.
“We can’t compare last year to this year,” said Plaza receptionist Abdel Halim Masri. “Who knows what is waiting for us tomorrow?”
If the hotels’ summer reservations are any guide, a flood of tourists does not await. Hoteliers said they typically have a wealth of reservations for the summer season by this point in the year, but so far the Bella Riva, for example, does not have a single summer reservation.
“People from the Gulf are very afraid to come to Lebanon,” Nabhan said. “I think the summer will not be good this year.”
The Tourism Ministry has witnessed an increase in the number of tickets booked on Middle East Airlines’ flights this summer over sales this spring, but Sardouk acknowledged that hotels have a feeble number of reservations for the holiday season.
To ease the sector’s suffering, ministers promised tourism-industry leaders on March 7 that the government will pay the interest on an emergency series of long-term loans for tourist enterprises.
The ministries will need one more month to establish the procedure for the loans, Sardouk said, although she could not estimate when the private sector will receive the financing.
Tourism accounts for roughly 10 percent of Lebanon’s $22 billion GDP, and the industry employs upward of 150,000 people. Slightly more than 1 million tourists visited Lebanon last year, and the ministry projects a similar figure for 2007. With that number of visitors last year, Lebanon’s 350 hotels piled up $280 million in losses in 2006’s second half and have let go about one-quarter of their 25,000 employees.
Source:Daily Star
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