RIYADH, 11 October — Buoyed by a nearly 25 percent surge in the tourist traffic last year and 16 percent in the first nine months of this year, Jordan is shifting into high gear to attract Saudi Arabia’s upscale expatriates by targeting housing compounds and major organizations where they are employed.
This was disclosed yesterday at a press conference held by Jordan’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Taleb Rifai at the residence of Jordanian Ambassador Hani Khalifa in the Diplomatic Quarter here.
The Jordanian minister, who was in Riyadh for the OIC tourism ministers’ conference, also announced that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon have decided to promote “complementary tourism‚” under which round-trip package tours would be organized from the Kingdom to the three Middle Eastern countries.
He said his ministry and the Supreme Commission for Tourism have reached an understanding under which Jordan would train SCT’s employees in the application of GIS (Geographic Information System) and other operational aspects relating to the promotion of the tourism product.
The thrust of the tourism campaign involving the Kingdom and Jordan, he pointed out, would be on theme tours. Thus tourists could visit Madain Saleh and Hijaz in Saudi Arabia as part of a package tour, which would also take them to the historical sights of Petra in Jordan. The minister said this was a major outcome of his meeting with Prince Sultan ibn Salman, secretary-general of SCT during his current visit to Riyadh.
Asked about the new dimension of the campaign, Rifai said that to start with, they would bring out brochures in English on the tourist attractions of Jordan. They have also decided to market these tours by promoting direct sales through a specialized agency in Riyadh.
Spelling out the salient features of Jordanian tourism, the minister said the number of tourist arrivals last year stood at 1.4 million, of which 60 percent were Arabs. Saudis comprised 65 percent of Arab tourists.
This marked a significant trend in the post-Sept. 11 scenario in which tourist traffic to the West declined, even as there was a corresponding increase in the traffic to Jordan.
“Tourism is Jordan’s oil fuelling its economic growth. It contributes almost 10 percent of our GDP and 40 percent of our exports. Some 11 percent of the Jordanian work force is employed in the tourism and tourism-related industry,” he said.
The decision to adopt an integrated strategy to tourism development among the four states would lend a new momentum to the pan-Arab tourism promotion campaign.
