Friday, 18 February 2005Lebanon's tourist boom in peril
If you have been watching a certain American TV news network in the past year, you will probably have seen a series of alluring adverts urging viewers to Rediscover Lebanon.
Sexy Lebanese-American voices extolled the country's nightclubs, its DJs, its wine, its beaches, its mountains, and its cosmopolitan capital city - Beirut.
"Our biggest challenge today," said one voice in the government-sponsored advert, "is to transform the perceptions of people, to make them feel comfortable coming to Beirut."
That challenge is even bigger now, after Rafik Hariri, the man most associated with the revival of Lebanon as a holiday destination, was savagely killed by a bomb in Beirut's hotel district on Monday.
The irony is that - until this week - Lebanon really had started to feel like the safest place in the whole Middle East.
Once a by-word for the worst kind of mayhem, Beirut in the summer of 2004 saw a multitude of Saudis escaping their own bomb-scarred streets for a bit of rest and recreation in Lebanon.
Any hint that the horrors of the 1975-90 civil war might be returning, and Lebanon must surely wave goodbye to the $1bn of direct foreign investment it is said to have racked up from this influx.
Tourism success story
Hariri, who was prime minister from 1992-1998 and 2000-04, may have been accused of destroying Lebanon's economy and exploiting his position for personal gain, but there was no denying his success in opening the country up for visitors.
The government says 1.2 million people came to visit Lebanon last year, the vast majority of them Saudis and other Gulf Arabs. The average from previous years was 300,000 visitors.
The unrest in Saudi Arabia certainly played a role, as did the fact that - post-9/11 - holidays in the west had lost some of their appeal.
But more important has been the special delights Lebanon now has to offer.
These include the natural beauty of the landscape, the pleasant summer climate in the mountains, the agreeable population and, probably most of all, the fantastic amenities that Hariri and his tycoon friends have been building to tempt rich foreigners to visit.
Mountain retreats, Beirut reborn
As a regular summer visitor to Lebanon, it was fascinating to observe the social impact of the Gulf influx in 2004.
The black-swathed Gulf women on the beaches were greeted with indignation by their Lebanese sisters - who have fought long and hard for the right to wear as little as possible along the country's charming 200-kilometre coastline.
But their appearance on the beaches has been limited.
It's the Lebanon mountain range that is really to the liking of the Gulf visitors, and resort towns like Aley - scene of the fiercest fighting in past decades - are now swamped with Gulf families during the summer.
They take over whole buildings, whole streets, promenading in the cool mountain air and feasting in the many high-quality restaurants.
The Gulf men mostly seemed to congregate in Beirut, whose downtown area has been transformed - again thanks to Hariri - into a pristine promenading area, complete with luxury hotels and cafes.
The Lebanese too, and a smattering of foreigners, also throng the bars and nightclubs of the downtown area, as they have for a few years now, since Hariri's renovation turned it from wartime rubble into a throbbing city centre
Damage limitation
One of Lebanon's priorities after the death of Rafik Hariri must be to prevent the country again becoming somewhere foreigners are afraid to set foot.
At least it can be said that his killing was not a Bali-style attack, calculated to wreck a successful tourist industry.
In fact, the location of the blast may have been chosen to minimise "collateral damage" for such a massive bomb - between the empty St Georges hotel and another building currently being renovated.
Another important point is that the Lebanese do not want another war. The last one was so painful, so traumatic, that it is not on anyone's agenda.
But the main factor that is going to determine whether people will be going back to Lebanon for a holiday is whether its politics revert to the largely peaceful process it had become since the war.
The next few months - with elections due in May and the issue of Syria's role in Lebanon looming large - will be crucial.
Story from BBC NEWS |
Friday, 18 February 2005
By Martin Asser
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