Promoting sites

Jordanians are proud of the fact that Petra ranks among the top 25 travel destinations worldwide.

This comes as no surprise since the rose-red city is one of UNESCO’s heritage sites and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. It indeed is a must-see site, both for us, locals, and for the world at large.

Yet, this amazing Nabataean city in the south of the country has been losing tourists at an alarming rate, for reasons that have a lot to do with regional instability.

Very often, tourists visit Jordan as part of a regional package. Moreover, many foreigners tend to lump Jordan with the countries in surrounding it, so when revolutions and insurgencies happen all around, tourists tend to stay away from the Kingdom as well.

That is exactly what happened this year, and tourism to the country dropped by about 20 per cent compared to last year. Worse, tourism to Petra, Jordan’s pride, dropped this year by about 40 per cent.

While there isn’t much Jordan can do to restore security and safety to the Middle East, it can do a lot in terms of marketing its tourist and historic places, despite all the constraints and hardships.

Petra needs to be put on the world map in a more prominent way. This can be done by initiating a special global campaign that highlights the beauty and importance of the city.

Maybe a “Petra week” promotional drive can be launched in time for the tourism season.

The region will hopefully regain peace and normalcy soon enough, and safety and stability will once again reign in the area.

But Jordan cannot sit idle by waiting for that moment. It has too many beautiful things to show the world not to work actively to promote them. No expense is too much for that purpose.

jordantimes