AMMAN— The number of tourists is expected to
continue to grow in the coming autumn season and the years to come,
stakeholders said Saturday.
The
Tourism Ministry announced that tourism income reached JD1.2 billion this year until
the end of May, exceeding the expectations set in the National Tourism Strategy
2021-2025, which stood at JD1 billion.
اضافة اعلان
Petra, Jordan’s
largest attraction, witnessed an increase in the numbers of visitors, which are
close to those recorded in 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic), Chief
Commissioner of Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority
Suleiman Farajat
told
Jordan News on Saturday.
The Red-Rose city
received a total of 86,000 tourists during the first five months of this year,
compared to 87,000 in the same period of 2019, according to Farajat.
In the same period during the two years of the
pandemic, Petra received 10,225 in 2021 and no tourist in 2020, the
commissioner said.
Farajat said the
expects the number of visitors to Petra in 2022 to reach 75 percent of the
number recorded in 2019, when the ancient city celebrated its one-millionth
visitor and received 1,135300 tourists in that entire year.
Vice Chairman of
the Jordan Inbound Tour Operators Association
Awni Kawar said that the figures
are promising, but they will not reach the numbers achieved in 2019 despite the
increasein bookings for September, October, and November.
According to Kawar,
most tourists who came this year are from European countries; there is a
decline in the number of tourists from Far Asian counties, which still impose
travel restrictions related to COVID-19.
Tourism recovery
was faster than expected and figures are much better than last year, Mahmoud
Khasawneh, member of the board of directors of the Jordan Society for Travel
Agents, said.
Based on booking
baskets of local and international travel agents, the volume of booking in
September, October, and November is close to the volume in 2019, according to
Khasawneh.
“In the tourism
sector, our aim is to mitigate the repercussions of the COVID-19 crisis and
reach the figures recorded before the pandemic as soon as possible,” Khasawneh
said, adding that “we work in accordance with the
World Tourism Organization’s
action plan that focuses on restarting tourism”.
He urged intensifying work on marketing plans and campaigns
to increase the numbers of visitors to the Kingdom.
Read more Features
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
