Tourism Minister Walid Nasser is optimistic for the upcoming holiday seasons' revenues. (Credit: AFP)
BEIRUT — The head of both the Federation of Tourism Syndicates and the hotel owners’ syndicate Pierre Achkar on Tuesday expressed little optimism for tourism in the upcoming holiday season, saying that the sector in Lebanon is experiencing a “great depression” amid the country’s economic crisis. He added that 2,000 hotel rooms remain closed since the 2020 Beirut port explosion, which destroyed swathes of the country’s capital city.
Here’s what we know:
• According to the state-run National News Agency, Achkar said in a statement that the tourism agencies are also struggling because of electricity and water shortages “without any political and economical solutions on the horizon.” Achkar added that he is hoping Lebanese expats will travel to the country in the upcoming season but said he “fears travel restrictions after the emergence of a new COVID-19 variant.
• On Monday, during an interview with Al-Hurra TV, Tourism Minister Walid Nassar presented a much more optimistic outlook on the upcoming season, claiming that revenues from Lebanon's “Winter Promotional Packages,” which were launched earlier this month and are sponsored by the Tourism Ministry and sold by 38 travel agencies, will reach around $60 million. He said the packages include 280 flights that can carry at total of 40,000 passengers. “In my estimation these flights will be full,” he said.
• The minister explained that the countries included in the packages are Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Armenia and Greece, adding that the packages include a plane ticket, three nights at a hotel and a PCR test. A travel agency told L’Orient Today that the packages’ cost ranges between $300 and $900 per person.
• Nassar also said that the number of passengers who traveled to Lebanon in the first nine months of this year was 579,000 compared to 414,000 passengers during the same period last year. He explained, however, that this improvement is still very low compared to 2019 when 1.936 million passengers traveled to Lebanon.