Peace treaty boosts Jordan's tourism sector
Peace treaty boosts Jordan's tourism sector
By Rana Sabbagh
MADABA, Jordan (Reuter): Jordan's small tourism industry is creaking under a boom fueled by the kingdom's October peace treaty with Israel.
Jordan's 150 tourist buses, owned by the country's sole agency, are overwhelmed by foreign and Israeli tourists drawn by the end of 46 years of conflict between the countries.
The use of commercial buses to ease the strain has created shortages in public transport, triggering outcries from Jordanians still hostile to the Jewish state.
Hotels have been running near capacity since January, tour operators face a shortage of multi-language guides and ancient sites lack infrastructure to handle the flood of visitors.
"All of this (strains) because the country never expected to be running at 100 percent," said Khalil Adwan of Jordan's new Tourism Board, a non-governmental agency promoting the kingdom abroad.
"If you take the first 90 days of 1995 and the same period in 1994, foreign tourism went up by 60 percent, excluding Israeli tourists," he told Reuters.
Despite the headaches, tourism has produced the quickest economic benefits from peace. It is the only sector on Amman's stock market to show significant gains since the treaty, with investors rushing into hotel projects.
Over 500 Israeli tourists have entered Jordan each day since the borders opened in November. More are expected after May 1, when an initial daily limit of 900 Israeli tourists is lifted.
But many question whether Jordan, with limited facilities, can handle more tourists.
"Since peace and the opening of borders, we are under severe pressure," said Nabil Hamarneh, supervising a famous Byzantine church in Madaba, 40 km (25 miles) from Amman.
Some 1,500 people visit the church each day to see its sixth century mosaic floor map of the Holy Land, up from 500 before. Traffic at nearby Mount Nebo, burial site of Moses, has doubled. Souvenir shops report brisk business.
"My sales went up by 30 percent in the past two months," said the owner of a shop near the Madaba church selling Bedouin rugs, artifacts and peace memorabilia. "Peace has revived us."
The tourism ministry says 696,760 tourists came to Jordan in 1994 spent 443 million dinars (US$633 million), up on 390 million dinars ($557 million) in 1993.
But the boom in business has brought tensions with Israelis. Jordanian complaints are based on everything from a straightforward refusal to end the conflict to annoyance with tight-fisted Israeli shoppers.
"They exhaust your soul and drive you mad before they buy something," said a carpet merchant, repeating an oft-heard complaint that Israelis are determined to bargain everywhere from Bedouin markets to five-star hotels.
Jordan's opposition press has accused Israeli tourists of hotel thefts, cheating their hosts and desecrating the tomb of Aaron, brother of Moses, in the ancient Nabatean city of Petra.
Ghazi Saudi, a board member in Jordanian organizations for both nature preservation and archaeology, accused Israelis this month of stealing rare wild flowers and illegally taking archaeological artifacts from the country.
Saudi demanded strict enforcement of national laws: "If this solution proves to be ineffective, Jordan would be better off without any Israeli tourists."
There is also unease in the tourism industry that Jordan, with limited capacity, would be shortsighted in concentrating on Israeli tourism if it alienated traditional -- and more free- spending -- tourists from Europe.
"Jordan can never be a destination for mass tourism," said a tour operator. "We need to target selective tourism and market our cultural, religious and archaeological riches."
But the Tourism Board's Adwan, while sharing the concern to retain the European visitors, is confident the kingdom can handle higher numbers of tourists by investing in new facilities and upgrading older ones.
Two new companies will add over 100 buses to Jordan's tourist fleet this year and new guides are about to graduate from crash courses at universities.
A burst of construction at key sites -- Amman, Petra and the Red Sea resort of Aqaba -- will raise classified hotel beds to over 9,000 by 1996 from 6,931, many of them now far below international standards.