Jordan Times
Friday, October 7, 2005
32,000 tourists visit Petra
last month
By Dalya Dajani
AMMAN — Visitor flow to Petra continued to rise
this year as the demand for tourist travel gets back on track both here and
around the world.
According to the latest official figures, the ancient city had received a total
of 270,000 visitors by the end of September, up 26 per cent from the same period
of last year.
The visitor influx generated JD4 million in revenue for the tourism sector.
Tourism officials noted high business activity in Petra this year with some
32,000 tourists visiting the ancient site last month.
The visitors, who included 4,650 Jordanians, generated JD538, 000 in tourism
revenue.
Meanwhile, the Petra Region Authority (PRA) is working on “making Petra more
attractive to visitors” and enhancing its role as the most important tourist
site in the Kingdom.
PRA Director General Abdullah Abu Eleim said now that infrastructure work was
complete, priority would go to other projects such as planting decorative and
forest trees along Queen Rania Street, which connects Taybeh Village with Wadi
Musa.
In addition, the PRA is building a park with a special zone for children in the
Falahat area.
The rise in visitor flow witnessed in Petra is not surprising as global tourism
experts note a significant improvement in tourist travel this year.
According to the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), international tourist
arrivals registered in the first seven months of this year rose 5.9 per cent
compared to the same period of 2004.
The preliminary data compiled for the WTO World Tourism Barometer indicated an
estimated 460 million tourist arrivals worldwide, between January and July this
year.
WTO officials cited the increase of 25 million tourists as a sign of healthy
travel demand despite terror-related incidents and natural disasters that have
taken place over the past year.
Earlier this year, global tourism experts had predicted that such instabilities
would not have a substantial effect on tourist travel.
They said the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, for example, had not “noticeably
influenced world, or regional, tourism trends,” as predicted by WTO at the
beginning of the year.
The same is true with regard to the recent bomb attacks in London, Turkey —
Kusadasi, Istanbul and Ankara — and those in Cairo and Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt,
which have been compounded by airline accidents and natural disasters around the
world, including floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes.
“In terms of consumer behaviour, it is quite evident that travellers have been
undeterred by external threats. At the global level the impact of such shocks
has been negligible,” the WTO announced this week.
“They may have led to temporary shifts in travel flows, but they have not
stopped people travelling. At the local level, the impact can be severe in the
affected areas, but in most cases this is surprisingly short-lived,” it added.
According to the WTO, most regions and subregions have enjoyed sustained growth
in tourism demand during the first seven months of 2005, despite normal
fluctuations from one month to another.
Available information suggests that Africa and Asia-Pacific are the
best-performing regions of the world so far this year, growing at 9 per cent
each.
The Americas are enjoying another good year with region-wide growth averaging 7
per cent through the end of July.
Growth for Europe in the same period is estimated at 5 per cent and that for the
Middle East at 3 per cent.