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.
By Dalya Dajani
© Jordan Times 2005
