AMMAN — After witnessing a slight
recovery this year, the
Jordanian tourism sector took a beating as hundreds of
trips to the Kingdom were canceled due to the spread of Omicron, which
compounded the negative impact the prolonged COVID-19 crisis had on it,
stakeholders said.
اضافة اعلان
Some tourist guides said that all
their booked tours had been canceled due to the decisions of some countries to
ban travel to Jordan for tourism purposes.
Hotel Association President
Abdelhakim Alhindi said that 70 percent of hotel reservations by foreign
tourists were canceled, as were most bookings for weddings and New Year celebrations
after the government made CPR tests taken 48 hours before attendance and proof
of two shots of vaccine compulsory, Alhindi told
Jordan News on Sunday.
Alhindi asked to have the
PCR test replaced with the quick test (rapid lateral flow) or to exempt those who had
three vaccine shots from having to undergo the test.
The spread of Omicron led to the cancellation
of at least 85 percent of the bookings for the New Year holidays, Mahmoud
Khasawneh, member of the board of directors of
Jordan Society of Tourism and Travel Agents (JSTA), said Sunday.
Khasawneh said that no tourists from
some countries in East Asia, such as Indonesia, the
Philippines, and
China,
came to Jordan since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020.
Faith-based travel usually entails a
combination of countries, and every country has its own rules for arrivals, which
makes procedures too complicated for travelers, said the official.
This year, there was a slight
recovery in tourism, especially in October, but it did not reach even 20 percent
of the 2019 figures (the best year for Jordanian tourism), according to
Khaswaneh.
In 2019, Jordan witnessed an
unprecedented hike in the number of tourists, with Petra (Jordan’s largest
attraction) celebrating its first one-millionth visitor.
Khasawneh said that according to
strategic studies of international travel companies, tourism will not fully
recover before 2024, but in the case of Jordan, the situation is worse, as the
pandemic is not the only factor that affects tourism, but there is also the geopolitical
factor that plays a role.
Khasawneh called for canceling the PCR
test in the country from where tourists originate, as getting it done “is not
as easy as in Jordan”; instead, tourists can have only one test done upon
arrival.
He also called for exempting
vaccinated tourists from taking the PCR test and reducing the prices of tests
in general.
Khasawneh proposed designing
subsidized trip packages during this period to reduce the cost for travel
agents and encourage tourists to visit the Kingdom, and stressed that this
period is an opportunity to participate in “reshaping the tourism map and placing
Jordan [on it] as a major destination.”
60,000 Jordanians work in the
tourism sector, directly and indirectly, and 692 travel agencies employ 5,295 people
in permanent jobs, according to Khasawneh.
Jordan Tourism Board said that it
supports any measure that would boost tourism and protect people's health at
the same time.
Italian-speaking tourist guide
Marwan Saad stressed that all his bookings for the coming season were canceled
due to Italy’s placing Jordan in the “E” category, which bans Italians from coming
to Jordan for tourism purposes.
“We breathed a sigh of relief after
15 months of complete tourism recess; now I am jobless again as the Italian
authorities banned travel to Jordan from December 15 until January 31”, Saad
told
Jordan News in an interview on Sunday.
The New Year is the most important season
for Jordanian tourist guides who speak Italian, according to Saad, who called
for working on restoring the epidemiological status back to safe to enable
tourism to resume.
Faisal Salitah, another tourists
guide who accompanies this week a multi-national group, said that usually at
this time of the year, the tourist sites would be full of tourists, but this
week, the sites are almost empty.
According to official figures,
tourism accounted for around 13 percent of Jordan’s GDP in 2019.
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