To Petra and beyond

Minister of Tourism HE Nayef Hmeidi Al-Fayez.

Future potential
Most recently, the Ministry has increased its focus on promoting the country as a family destination and is targeting new markets including expatriates living in the Middle East and travellers out of Asia.

“We are very much targeting now the expats in the GCC,” says Al-Fayez. They want to escape to an experience and Jordan provides them with that, and they have the time because they can come over at the weekend for short stays; with a good connectivity between Jordan and the rest of the region it is doable.

“And now we are also entering into Asia, Asia is important for us; our office was established in India 2009 and India is picking up and doing really well. But also we’re looking at south east Asia and Japan and Korea. There is a big potential for Jordan. We want to diversify our source market. There are seasons for different markets and we want Jordan to be a year-round destination,” says Al-Fayez.

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All this combines to meet three key targets: an increase in visitor numbers, an increase in length of stay and an increase in travel and tourism GDP.

Currently, average length of stay stands at 4.8 days, with a goal of reaching six to seven days. The challenge is encouraging the visitors who simply come for a one-day trip to Petra to stay for longer.

“We had a problem with that by the way,” admits Al-Fayez. “A lot of people used to come to Jordan for one day and leave, now they are understanding that Jordan is much more than a one-day visit. The average length of stay is 4.8 but we have people who come and stay in Jordan up to 10-12 days.”

The GDP target is also ambitious, but Al-Fayez is confident the potential is there.

“Today we’re talking about 13 or 14% of our GDP coming from tourism. In the coming years, we are hoping to reach around 18% of our GDP,” he asserts. “We are not a mass tourism destination but we have not reached our potential yet.

“Tourism in Jordan has tremendous potential. We’re moving towards increasing and we’ve done really well in the last seven-to-eight years and our numbers show that, but still we have a lot of potential in the coming years,” he concludes.

Jordan tourism strategy 2011-2015 key targets
• Creation of 25,000 tourism jobs
• Increase female participation in the workforce by 15%
• Enhance the hospitality skills of 40,000 existing employees
• Increase air capacity into Jordan by 20%
• The completion of 20 infrastructure projects
• Ensure all hotels and up to 80% of restaurants are approved and grouped under a new national classification scheme

Upcoming hotel projects
• The Red Sea Astrarium, a US $1.5 billion Star Trek-themed resort in Aqaba backed by King Abdullah of Jordan, who was once an extra in an epidose of the television show Star Trek: Voyager.
• Dead Sea hotels, the five-star beachfront Sharm Hotel and three-star Winter Valley Hotel are sure to open in 2012.
• Cave Hotel in Wadi Rum, an 80,000ft² hotel cut out of rock in Wadi Rum, designed by Oppenheim Architecture + Design and expected to be built in 2014.
• Two new museums, including one at Lot’s Cave and the new National Museum in Amman, a $25 million project that has taken three decades of planning and years of work.

Jordan in numbers
• 8.2mn 2010 visitor numbers
• 9.4mn 2012 visitor target
• 2.4bn Value of Jordan tourism industry 2010
• 4.2bn Targeted value of Jordan tourism industry by 2015