JEDDAH, 6 April 2008 — After school on Wednesday a majority of Jeddah students will be dismissed for a 10-day holiday. The Ministry of Education and local schools say that this is to allow students time to prepare for upcoming exams, but are the breaks also impacting Jeddah’s tourism market?

According to Mohammed Ali, regional manager of Jeddah-based Ace Travel, they do.

“During school breaks, even if they are short, our business witnesses around a 30 percent surge,” he said.

Local hotels are also benefiting from school breaks with their sales increasing by as much as 40 to 50 percent, Syed Quadri, marketing executive at Le Meridian hotel in Jeddah, told Arab News.

“Currently we are running a family promotion with special rates which will be offered only during this month through May,” he said.

Realizing the impact even minor school breaks can have on their business low-cost airlines, such as SAMA Air and NAS Air, have been advertising their special offers to their newly-introduced international destinations in the Gulf region.

“My family has already made arrangements to travel to our home in Sharm Al-Sheikh,” said Noura Kamel, a Saudi high school student who says she plans to study while also taking breaks and enjoying the Egyptian resort. Her father, she said, feels that the break would help her and her siblings relax and be able to better focus on the exams when they return.

In a recent report released by Euromonitor International, the opening up of the Saudi aviation sector has over the past two years allowed for growth in air arrivals by 65 percent and departures by 16 percent. The report further stated that due to the introduction of low-cost carriers travel patterns in the Kingdom are changing allowing people to be able to take more trips per year both regionally and locally.

Binan Ahmed, a primary school student, said her family would be traveling during the school break. “My family and I are planning to go to Amman where we have relatives staying,” she said.

Hajar Saeed, a kindergarten teacher at a public school, said she was looking forward to the break saying that she plans to go to Dubai during the holiday.

“Because my students are too young to take exams we usually get the two weeks meant for studying as well as the two weeks of the exams off. So I am planning a month of shopping and activities trip with my family,” Saeed said.

But how are working parents that can’t take time off to travel coping with the numerous school breaks? Many feel that there are too many breaks and that traveling, even domestically, using time that should be devoted solely to studying is not good for students.

“I am a working mom and quite frankly feel as if my children never go to school,” said Lujain Ibrahim, an Egyptian mother of three, who works at a local media company.

“Balancing my work schedule and dealing with my children who are at home due to school breaks is getting quite challenging; leaving children with our maid makes me uneasy while at work,” she added.

Dena Campbell, an American mother of five, agreed.

“The schools here usually give students time-off to study for exams. This is something which I don’t understand. In the West the time before exams is when teachers stress perfect school attendance in order to allow students to review lessons and have a chance to ask for help with subject material that they might not have previously been able to understand and to be totally prepared for the exams,” Campbell explained.

She said that she believes many students in Jeddah use school breaks to have fun rather than study.

“School breaks are just a waste of time,” Campbell said.