AMMAN —
Tourism stakeholders on Saturday called on the government to work on re-assuring target
countries about the health safety in Jordan and easing restrictions of tourists’
entry.
اضافة اعلان
President of
Jordan Inbound Tour Operators Association (JITOA) Awni Kawar told
Jordan News that many trips to Jordan slated for March were canceled due to the
epidemiological situation in the Kingdom.
Kawar said that the
numbers of cases infected by Omicron are high, but they are less severe, based
on the percentage of deaths, and called upon authorities to ease restrictions
on travelers.
He suggested that tourists be requested one of two
certificates, either vaccination or a PCR test, prior to arrival, instead of
both.
Mahmoud Khasawneh,
member of the board of directors of the Jordan Society of Tourism and Travel
Agents told
Jordan News that “the tourism sector has been destroyed and
travel agents are not working at all”.
The government has
to help travel agents survive by reducing burdens through exemptions from
annual licensing fees and extending support programs, he said, also urging
embassies to draft 15-day emergency plans to explain that the health situation
in the
Kingdom is safe to “rescue the coming season”.
Nabih Riyal, JITOA
spokesperson, told
Jordan News that most of the 235 travel agencies in
Jordan had stopped work for the past two years and are currently facing
accumulating challenges that threaten their existence.
Most travel agents
are in debt, some owing more than JD100,000 to banks, according to Riyal.
The
Social Security Corporation program “Istidama” helped agents pay 85 percent of salaries, he
said, but it is another debt that they will have to lay back in June 2023.
According to Riyal,
foreign travel agencies awe Jordanian counterparts millions of dollars, as,
when the COVID-19 crisis started, those travel agents failed to pay because
they had closed their businesses or,
even if they did not close, were unable to pay due to financial challenges.
Riyal said that 50
percent of trips to Jordan booked for the coming spring season, which already
were 30 percent lower than that of the number before the pandemic, are now
canceled.
During the recent
New Year season, Italy had canceled 100 percent of trips and extended a travel
ban for tourists to Jordan until March 15, said Riyal.
Other countries
canceled 50-100 percent of their trips to the Kingdom, which means that the
coming spring season is already hit again, he added.
“June, July and
August are already low season and the fall season is vague due to uncertainty
because of
COVID-19,” Riyal added.
In March 2020, all
tourist attractions in Jordan were closed, as part of countries’ measures to
combat the spread of the coronavirus, causing tourism stakeholders to suffer
from total joblessness for several months.
Even after
re-opening of airports and tourist sites, tourism stakeholders are half jobless
due to the ever-changing rules related to the pandemic in every country.
Tourism makes up 14 percent of the country’s
GDP, accounting
for JD5 billion in 2019, and employs 55,000 Jordanians directly, according to
official figures.
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