This is having a marked effect on the growth of the national economy. Polish Economy Minister Piotr Wozniak says that investment, mostly foreign, increased by 16.5 percent in 2006, unprecedented since 1989, and the 2.5 million companies which are mostly foreign owned, and which now exist in Poland, are staying put, not repatriated but reinvested in the country.

“Every 1 billion euros invested in Poland translates into a rise of exports by 800 million euros,” says Wozniak. “This is a positive sign, he added, as FDI in other countries in the region is primarily directed to benefit the investor country.”

Effects…

The increased confidence of the international financial community is creating a consistently high GDP.
GDP growth had been strong and steady from 1993 to 2000 with only a short slowdown from 2001 to 2002. The prospect of closer integration with the European Union has put the economy back on track, with growth of 3.7% annually in 2003, a rise from 1.4% annually in 2002. In 2004, GDP growth was 5.4%, in 2005 3.3% and in 2006 6.1%. For 2007, the government has set a target for GDP growth at between 6.5 to 7.0%. Year
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4

2007 7.4% 7.0%(est) 6.5%(est) 6.0%(est) 2006 5.5% 5.8% 6.3% 6.7% 2005 2.1% 2.8% 3.7% 4.3% 2004 7.0% 6.1% 4.8% 4.9% 2003 2.2% 3.8% 4.7% 4.7%

Increased investments is translating into higher productivity and high exports and lowering unemployment that has consistently been between 18 percent and 20 percent however it declined from 17.6 percent in 2005 to 14.9 percent in 2006 and expected to drop below 10 percent by 2007’s end.
The future The future looks bright. Poland has become fully integrated into the world of globalization. The economic instruments of development has been set in place, its role in international financial institutions such as the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF and the OECD is opening up a wealth of opportunities not only for Poland to build bilateral economic relations based on sound judgments but better economic planning. And this is due to the knowledge-based economy the country is building as there is much investments in research and development centers being set in different towns and cities. Official figures suggest there are presently 40 R&D centers and some of these are part of production plants by IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft in cities like Cracow, Warsaw, Posnan and Lodz.
Research is very important for economic growth as Poland has the necessary scientific skills and brain manpower to sustain an economic based on product innovation and industrial development, and with backing from international companies, this can only the future of the economy is in very strong hands.

The idea of writing obituaries, extolling the person and contributions they made seem pointless, since the first stage of their existence in life is completed and by death, they are being prepared into another more mysterious phase: The after-life. This is the case for humanity, Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans, Americans and so on—an inevitable road we all go through.

Pointless to dwell on also because society goes on developing, transforming itself, twisting through different persons who will also be born, live their lives, progress, die and be replaced by others who will in turn become part of long ended process of “temporary evolution” that has been going on since time immemorial with much philosophers, intellectuals and contributors.

When Mahmood Darwish died recently the Arab world—and rightly so—cried for his poetry, intellect and nobility. He was the quaint-essential poet intellectual who formulated words to give action and meaning, to lower the pedestal from the highbrow to the man-in-the-street.

Through his poems, he devoted his life to fighting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the injustices brought on by that through his words, semantics, genre that had a rallying symbolism to the masses.

His death prompted many to hold their hands up and say all our modern intellectuals and leaders of thought, philosophers, political thinkers, sociologists, literary essayists are dying.

It’s as if the intellectual, ideological, thinking framework and infrastructure in the Arab world is coming to halt and it is not being replaced, but this is far from the truth and applies not only in the Arab world but beyond. The problem is that the emerging new intellectuals take a long time to come on the scene, bear fruit, sometimes not even in their life-time.

This gloomy trend might have been started with the passing away of the world-famous Edward Said who was voted as one of the greatest 100 minds of the 20th century, novelist Abdel Rahman Mounif, cultural academic Hisham Sharabi, and Abdel Wahab Al Missiri, the writer of the first “Zionist Encyclopedia” in Arabic to name but a small number.

Important though they were, these were mere mortals, their contributions ended once they died, what stays however, is their achievements, intellect, contributions, and the schools of thought they may have built and consequently become part of our legacy and heritage. Their sum totals of their thought become our public property.

But then it becomes up to us, as individuals to build on that intellectualism, and use it in the evolution for our own contributions to society. The deceased become part of the accumulated process of experiences and thought, part of our traditions, built from say Ibn Khaldoun, the claimed father of modern sociology and the great Islamic philosophers before him and the latter theorists Mohammad Abdu and Rashed Rida and literary writers like Taha Hussein, Najeeb Mafouz and even Hani Al Rahib who wrote the Zionist Character in the English Novel.

But even with these deaths society continues to progress forward with new thinking, perceptions, dialectically arguing with the purpose of finding solutions to existence, development, evolutions with intellectuals like Samir Amin for instance, who has his own school of thought in explaining the structures of the unequal nature of the international system and which subsequently became adopted as an explanation to the mechanism of imperialism and exploitation.

No single person for instance will replace these intellectuals that died or the current ones, Mahmood Darwish included. But they will continue to look on his poetry with inspiration and eventfulness as something not only to emulate, but use as part of the national struggles. His focus lay in the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination but his works must inevitably be used in a comparative perspective because of the symbolism and yearning that is invoked.

Everyone loved Darwish for his poems, even his detractors Israeli Zionists like former Prime Minister and ideologue hawk Ariel Sharon, who continue to lie in a coma in a Jerusalem hospital, made no secret about admiring the poetry of the late Palestinian.

In his life Darwish always sort to build a “broad front”, national and international, against occupation, oppression, subjugation and injustices, be it in Palestine, by Israel and on the world level where such practices are preached.

These characteristics found in his poetry or literary text may have actually set him apart from the other Arab intellectuals and activists that have since died except say for Edward Said, who built a intellectual school of thought regarding westernization, “Englishness”, a subject of his comparative literature classes, historical and contemporary stereotyping as well as his views and personas on Palestine and Palestinianism which was visibly expressed in his The Question of Palestine, and his articles most prominently in Al Ahram Weekly.

Darwish’s broad front included making acquaintances with Israeli intellectuals and perhaps like-minded poets like him who he believed could make an impact on the political, cultural and social scenes in Israel and create a new fusion of intellectual expression were Palestinian determination could become the new modus operandi to solving the Arab-Jewish conflict and the creation of a two-state solution where a Palestinian state would exist beside an Israeli state.

He read ferociously, and was open to all world traditions because he believed this would feed into his own poetry, make it more didactic, eclectic and open while sharpening its expression, and diction, believing the intellectual, Arab or otherwise, has a purpose in life, to create, improve, build upon for a better future.

Darwish was also a rare intellectual breed—strengthened by his cultural window on the world—in his constant strive to rejuvenate his words, and actions. He never allowed “staleness” to set in but would always seek to revive, modernize, ‘expressionalize’ to given new momentums.

‘Staleness’ is something that is always leveled against intellectuals and not necessarily Arabs only with they foci being is that they cease to be innovative in their expression.

Because of the contemporariness of the situation and its aspects of seeming blandness of continuing conflict, exploitation, recurring issues, intellectuals, poets, novelists, storey-tellers, writers, creative artists reach a situation where writing becomes dull and monotonous replacing liveliness, novelty and vicissitude. It becomes end in itself rather than a means to change and transform.

Darwish, and critics writing on Darwish has never believed that, with him mastering the pen to the fullest, pulling it, stretching it, dabbling with it till the last word, and expression drops out on paper. Not only did he become Palestine’s poet laureate, but his poetry recitals attracted thousands from all over the Arab world and those living abroad.

Poetry is for the elite, a statement not only applies in Palestine, in the Arab world and internationally, but for Mahmood Darwish poetry was for the masses, the educated, middle classes and the elite, where ever they came from, it refreshed, and inspired. Darwish was a poet, thinker, an activist, politician, and someone who was definitely interested in real change that criss-crossed societies, standing as a vanguard to alter the occupied situation in Palestine, and outside it, change that would reform states and powers, and change that would bring about more egalitarian societies.

His work would continue to live on, being no doubt an inspiration to others who would take on the new challenge, and continue in their own way to find new means of expression to change, alter, continuing need for better end. No doubt the work would also have to end the occupation, rally for more equal social structures, less dogmatic relations between states, respect for one another rather than putting-down the other.

These are legacies which continue following death. They should be taken up by new personalities who become more dynamic making their own imprint, they become the new vanguards and torch-bearers for new steps forward, the new intellectual fight as it were. Despite the deaths of our intellectuals, new revivalism must be born.

By Dr Marwan Asmar The author is a free-lance writer living in Amman.

I Brand identity

1) How does your image (logo, choice of colors, promotional materials) reflect your identity? Since its establishment in 1965, the Petra Travel and Tourism Co. have been keen to reflect its image through its logo: A miniature and a graphic version of the Treasury. This immediately created a travel linkage between the city of Petra, its Treasury and the Petra Travel and Tourism Co., reflecting itsidentity as a travel and tourism company. It wanted a color to increase its identification with the ancient city of Petra and heighten the tourism association. Petra Tours chose Rose Red because it is the color texture of the rocky hills of Petra, and is today in all of its literature, catalogues and promotion materials.

II Brand Management 1) Is there a group of decision-makers who are responsible for the brand’s equity and management? The brand equity and management is the responsibility of the Group Marketing Manager of the Petra Travel and Tourism Co in coordination with the management and the different heads of the divisions in the company that include Petra Holidays, Petra World Travel and Petra Events Management. These divisions today are under one brand logo and color followed by the names of each division to reflect a united approach under one label: The Petra Travel and Tourism Co. Through our different literature and media drives—local, international, websites and online magazines—we ensure our one brand name is well exposed to local and global markets.

2) What are the measures or systems in place to receive customer feedback to evaluate brand customer relationship? The Petra Travel and Tourism Co. have a number of ways to evaluate brand customer relationships: Through a questionnaire given to the customer after he buys one of our products and/or it communicates with the customer directly through telephone to find out his views about the travel and tourism services and products they offer. Occasionally as well, they monitor through internet surveys and hits on a particular product we offer.

3) Is your brand registered locally or abroad? The Petra Tours brand is registered locally inside the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and recognized internationally.

III Brand Development

1) There are a number of channels for distributing Petra Tours brand products and services to local and international markets through:

i) The Petra Tours websites ii) Electronic massages to their customers and agents all over the Arab region and the world. iii) Sponsoring of important events and make sure they are appropriately covered by the media. iv) Building relations with different touristic places, shops, and restaurants, especially those that have a lively personality, character and are popular by offering sponsorship in turn for putting our Petra name and logo in their literature, flyers and billboards.

2) Are there any product or service development programs in place? Please include how they are in line with your objectives. The Petra Travel and Tourism Co., constantly offers new products and services to reflect the buoyant state of the tourism industry, locally and globally. Thus for instance, they recently produced our latest brochure titled Petra Holidays Winter Packages in an attractive format which was send out to their clients in Jordan and overseas. They constantly review their different tourism products and services through regular meetings with the management and staff to ensure their packages reflect the latest touristic venues and offerings in Jordan and the world. Petra Tours frequently sends its staff and management on local and international tours to experience products first-hand to be able to formulate packages for Jordanians who may wish to travel abroad. Recently, they’ve been to the Algarve in Portugal for the objective of marketing it their Jordanian and other Arab tourists under their different divisions in the company which have become brand names in themselves.

3) Briefly describe your brand development/marketing plan? Our brand development as displayed in their Rose Red logo continues to be its major strength when making marketing plans to promote their products.

IV Brand Performance 1) How did branding contribute to the growth of your business? The Petra name and logo has come to serve as a brand in the ensuing years after 1965. The miniature image logo of the Rose Red Treasury has created trust, reliability and dependability between us, as a travel and tourism company and our client base. This has been much in evidence by the new divisions created in the company to provide different travelers who either want to come to Jordan, or Jordanians to travel abroad. The Petra Events Management was especially created in 2002 to serve the conferencing, exhibitions and venues of the international market which increased their business. Similarly much more incentive travelers sent by their companies choose Jordan through our Petra brand name, label and logo.

2) How did Branding contribute to customer loyalty? Branding has been very important in creating loyalty as evidenced by repeat international visitors who come to Jordan time and again; and by the children and grand-children that have been coming to Jordan by word-of-mouth through their grand-mothers and grand-fathers. The Petra brand name has also created repeat business tourists by many international forums and exhibitors like the World Economic Forum, Rebuilding Iraq Conference and Exhibitions, and the China Products Fair to name but a few are coming to Jordan through the Petra Events Management of the Petra Travel and Tourism Co.

3) How did Branding contribute to the profitability of your company? As shown above, branding means greater business and profitability. As well, profit is measured in other ways as the organization of such conferences, exhibitions and events is increasing the acumen of our management and staff and gives them the confidence to continue to organize for more international venues. The brand has also meant, and as evidenced by the daily transactions and communications, that more first-time tourists and first-time businesses are talking to Petra Tours managers and staff about having Jordan as their preferred choice for their travel and activity.

It is because of such terrain that Nasser Kawar, decided to leave his insurance business and set up Petra Tours in downtown Amman in 1965. “I wanted to sell Jordan to the world, to make sure everyone knows, Jordan is our cradle of civilization.”

And so his company, only part of five or six tour operators at the time in Amman, started offering tour packages to the European and American markets, posing Jordan and Palestine as a great part of the cradle of civilization and the land of prophets.

Tourism at the time was beginning to develop with the government in Jordan actively taking a decision back in the early 1960s to market Jordan as a rich destination for international visitors. Statistics provided in the 1967 Jordan Yearbook by the Ministry of Culture and Information, showed the number of visitors coming to the region increased from 31,000 in 1951 to 616,831 in 1966.

“I established Petra Tours after much thought about the many touristic places in Jordan and the holy places of Palestine since we were regarded as one country,” says Kawar, who had also set up a branch of Petra Tours in Jerusalem.

Awni Kawar, presently general manager of the Group and the eldest son, remembers that time well. “Between 1965 till 1967, we catered for religious tourists, as plenty of visitors from Europe and the United States wanted to see the holy places especially of the city of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and would come through cruise liners that would dock in the Haifa port and the Qalandia Airport.”

It was a lively period as the 1967 Jordan Yearbook shows the number of visitors that came to the country from the United States stood at 56,000 in 1966, 22,000 from Britain, 15,852 from Germany and 20,000 from France. “On the ground as well as we were seeing tourists coming and going with our office in Jerusalem taking care of them and arranging their tours, crossing also the King Hussein bridge into Jordan and going back after their sightseeing,” remembers Nasser Kawar.

It was a dynamic period that came to an end after the 1967 June War and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “Strict security procedures that were imposed meant we were no longer able to operate our office effectively, and thus it had to be closed down.”

From the early 1970s the concentration become on selling Jordan as a “stand-alone destination” but in many ways it was a continuation of a previous era with the Kingdom becoming a center for religious, cultural, and historical tourism.

“Despite the seemingly never-ending political problems, more and more travel and tourism operators realized in the early 1970s Jordan was itself a great tourism destination with Petra, Jeresh, Madaba and Amman with its Roman Theater and its great citadel, all of whom exhibit the cradle of civilization concept,” adds Nasser Kawar.

In many ways Jordan as the place for inter-faith dialogue, in the Amman Citadel for instance, and among the ruins, a mosque continues to stand besides a church serving as a symbol of Muslim, Christian existence.
Tourism grew especially after the 1973 oil price rise when it started to change the economic geography of the region, when people started moving for work and greater remittances and revenues began to be distributed across the countries of the region.

“One story I will always remember is the day when Neil Armstrong, the famous astronaut visited Jordan in the early 1970s. He came as part of a large group of visitors, about 500, and I remember, my father and staff scurrying trying to find them hotels in downtown Amman,” says Awni Kawar.

Apart from the old Philadelphia Hotel and Intercontinental Hotel, the few first class hotels in Amman, Petra Tours employees, numbering four, had to book guests in the one- and two-star hotels that continue to exist in the downtown today.

These hotels, modest and basic, some of them built in the 1920s and 1930s, have seen glorious days when dignitaries and even royalties visiting Amman would stay in them. Today, still standing as cheap-priced hotels, they continue to serve as affordable accommodation for the so-called bag-back travelers who frequently come to Jordan as part of their travels in the region.

“The visit of Armstrong was a great event and a good public relations exercise for tourism in Jordan with the idea being that if he came many others especially from America and Europe would follow suit and resume their visits to Jordan,” continues Awni Kawar who has a degree in civil engineering. But although a visit such as this was important, people like Nasser Kawar had been traveling all their lives. “In our business, much traveling around the world is required, we can’t sit in the office and expect tourists to fall in our laps, we have to get out around the world and induce visitors to Jordan,” he says.

Nasser Kawar traveled all over not only in search of customers, ordinary visitors and/or corporate clients but to acquire knowledge of the different places and cultures. “I needed to travel to understand first-hand what people where looking for, the kind of holidays they are interested in and the services they expected and what we in Jordan can provide for them”.

Although today Petra Tours has become the General Sales Agent for many international airlines, including Cyprus Airways, China Airlines, Romanian Air Transport, Adria Airways, Tap Portugal, Federal Express and the latest Bahrain Air, his first deal was with Austrian Airlines.

The relationship continued since 1966 and was cemented through the first Austrian tourist group his company received to Jordan and since then has been increasingly steadily. The European and American component maintained an upward stride in the 1970s, if the Neil Armstrong and his entourage visit to Amman can be taken as a new stage.

Although, the Arab percentage of tourists to Jordan stood at around 72 percent between 1975 and 1985, the figure stood at 13.2 percent for American and European tourists coming additionally from newer places as the Scandinavian countries, former East European countries especially Poland as well as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, China, and Japan.

Such also required new innovations on the part of tour operators and travel agents like Petra Tours that began to provide different tour packages for travelers coming to the Kingdom. Although the religious tourist aspect continued to be important, the idea of cultural/historical tourism was gaining greater ground.

Through international marketing campaigns which, quite often tour operators like Petra Tours continued to carry out through such men as Nasser Kawar, Jordan begun to be sold to international operators as a country with heritage and history through the relics and archaeology of places as Jeresh, Umm Qais, and Petra, mosaics of Madaba and Crusader Castles like the one in Kerek, and of course the famous Dead Sea.

The idea was beginning to be put forward Jordan was indeed at the crossroads of civilization having strong elements of westernization as in the Greek and Roman culture and combining it with Middle East orientalism, espousing a cultural fusion that is unique in world societies.

This was very important for the kind of tourists who were coming to the Kingdom looking for something special rather than what they were used to in Europe and United States, or other places like Canada and Australia. The elements of religious tourism were becoming slowly combined with historical, religious, cultural forms of tourism. In fact the religious tourists, the ones that came to see the place were Prophet Mosses were supposed to have stood to view the Holy lands in Mount Nebo, came to be also viewed as culture, archaeology, nature or just plain sightseeing tourists.

“During this time as well, and as a result, Petra Tours started to specialize and provide packages for different tourists, we were, and are still quite flexible in our approach and offer whatever our clients want by offering customized tours,” Awni Kawar says who joined the family business in the early 1980s. Of course in the 1990s, such packages began to be offered as tours for businessmen or corporate clients who were increasingly coming to the Kingdom to attend different conferences. In fact this business was becoming so big and lucrative that in 2002 a special division was set up in Petra Tours to cater for this kind of tourism to the Kingdom.

Its head Mazen Kawar, second son of Nasser Kawar and a managing partner says: “Petra Events Management shows the extent of the development of the tourism sector in Jordan, and its different forms of specializations that is an added source of strength because now business and pleasure are combined for the benefit of the country.”

Top clients today want to hold their events, meetings, conferences and exhibitions in Jordan and this means a lot of business in terms of getting the economy moving. This trend in business tourism began to grow from the mid-1980s onwards when international companies, world organizations and NGOs began to look for different places around the world to hold their events.

“Through out the 1980s and 1990s Jordan began to gain greater reputation for its conferences, meetings and hotels which is bearing fruit today through the many international conferences annually held in different parts of the Kingdom, whether in the Dead Sea where we have a large convention center, in Amman and in Aqaba,” adds Mazen Kawar.

Today some of the big international names stage their conferences and events through Petra Tours including the World Economic Forum, Project Rebuild Iraq and SOFEX as well as many others whose delegates go on pre- and post-tours around the country during their businesses in Jordan.

Petra Tours have also become involved in the outbound business. Through their Petra World Travel, under Wael Kawar, the third son of Nasser Kawar, it specializes in sending travelers, whether Jordanian and Arab visitors from the region to different parts of the globe.

“A lot of businesses is made out of young Jordanian honeymooners who want to have that special holiday of a life-time, and we at Petra World Holidays seek to oblige,” he says.

The social change aspect of travel has diversified in the 1990s and today. “More and more honeymooners, upwardly mobile and others began to have their honeymoons in capitals across the Arab world, in say Cairo, Sharm Al Sheikh, Tunis and in countries where they had relatives in, to Europe, and today they are widening their destinations to Malaysia and south-east Asia, points out Wael Kawar.

Today’s Petra Tours high tower in Shmeisani is a far cry from its early years. However these years are fondly remembered as they are replicated in the Royal Automobile Museum of a small 1960s street with a booth signifying where Petra Tours started.

In many ways such is the representation of the modern history of tourism in Jordan which continues in an upward mode of development and bringing East and West together.

The old office now only exists in memory, replicated on a reconstructed street in the Royal Automobile Museum of impressive limos and sports car giving the visitor a yester year feel of Amman of the 1960s.

Petra Tours have moved with the times. Its office slowly branched into a group, becoming a series of professional departments dealing with every aspect of tourism from the inbound, outbound, MICE [Meetings, Incentives, Conferencing and Events), and to handling cargoes and becoming General Sales Agents for many international Airlines including Austrian Airlines, Cyprus Airways, China Airlines, Romanian Air Transport, Adria Airways, Tap Portugal, Federal Express and the latest Bahrain Air.

Although founded by one single man, Nasser Kawar, who still continues as the chairman, Petra Tours is today a professional company, with divisions and a structure that have evolved over the years, run by a professional staff with degrees not just in tourism but business, accounting and management. Today the divisions include Petra Tours, Petra Holidays, Petra Events Management, Petra World Travel, and Petra Express Cargoes with top managers to direct the day-to-day operations of the company.

They are supported by an administration and human resources department, an accounting department, a marketing department and an IT department.
Staff and managers are regularly encouraged to go on local, regional and international seminars to be updated with the latest techniques of the modern travel industry and follow best practice procedures in their every day workplace. They range from as far as intensive language courses in German, to tariffs and airline ticketing to cargo handling and events training.

Both the divisions and staff, in a smart distinctive uniform, have become strong components to a brand name and a rose-red Petra Treasury logo designed in 1965 and at a time when there was only a handful of tour operators in Amman as Nasser Kawar always likes to point out.

The owners of Petra Tours, the Kawar’s, presently run the company through a Board of Trustees with the father and three brothers, Awni, Mazen and Wael, who are also Managing Partners take a hands-on approach to business in a demarcated structure, with Awni acting as General Manager.

But it’s a flexible style of management, not direct control, but supervision with the departments, managers and employees being left on their own to function with the link being through regular meetings and email.

Petra Tours is in the fortunate position where business is fully automated through the computer with its first Apple Macintosh being introduced into the company in 1984. Today all departments work through PCs and laptops where pens and pencils are a rarity and where the company makes full use of IT technology and the Internet, developing business relationships all over the world.

Petra Tours has been quick to catch on and make use of the latest IT technology exemplified by the internet its websites include www.pttco.com, www.petratours.com, www.petraworldtravel.com, and www.petraevents.com realizing that the world business and travel markets are in the thralls of an internet revolution where transactions, business venues and looking at holiday destinations can not effectively be done otherwise.

With diversified structure comes diversified business. Petra Tours is a travel provider. When Nasser Kawar set up his modest agency in the 1960s, he wanted to provide a service for both travelers and visitors going to the Gulf, to Jordanian honeymooners taking holidays abroad which become very popular beginning in the 1970s and 1980s to making Jordan an international market for global tourists wanting to see unique sites.

What he didn’t realize was how big of a trend he was starting that began with a trickle of tourists to hundreds of thousands today coming to Jordan yearly to see interesting and diverse tourism products as Petra, Wadi Rum, Aqaba, Madaba, Jeresh, Um Qais, Ajloun and of course the Dead Sea and Baptism Site that is a milieu of history.

Statistics show more and more travelers are coming to the country every year. In 2006 for instance more than 657,3669 million came to Jordan as tourists, visitors, returning Gulf employees for a holiday and those coming for special vocations like religious tourists who come from the world-over, especially Italy and the United States.

There is today a beehive of activity in finding tourists accommodation whether in Five Star, Four Star, Three Star Hotels in Jordan as well as touristic suites especially during high seasons or important conferences like the Special Operations Forces Exhibition (SOFEX), the World Economic Forum, Rebuild-Iraq and the China Products Fair which go through Petra Events Management.

Besides the business tourists, international travelers are open-minded and come to explore these areas of Jordanian wonder, cultural representations, and spiritual signposts through Petra Tours which has a special incoming department that designs customized packages for individual travelers (jargoned in the trade as Frequent Individual Travelers), those who come in groups, and businessmen and corporate clients who come to Jordan regularly for events, meetings, exhibitions and want to go on pre and post tours to different parts of the Kingdom.

They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. At Petra Tours, and over the years, many letters and emails have been received by managers, executives and staff thanking them for the level of service they have received whilst in Jordan. Frequently they would write “our holiday was made more perfect because of our driver, our guide, or the level of hotel service” and informing Petra Tours of their intention of coming comeback and recommending their holiday to their friends.

Such letters of appreciation which have been coming from the United States, Britain, France, South Africa, Australia, News Zealand, Hong Kong, and Dubai have also created a “generational trend” where first time visitors would pass on the word to their sons and daughters and later to the grandchildren who would keep coming to Jordan.

They have become a source of inspiration to the Petra Travel and Tourism Company, and its different divisions and departments and as a source of reference to look at different tourism products, destinations, and niche markets.

Petra Tours sees Jordan as a destination for “special-interest groups” and “adventure tourism”, tourists who want to come to Jordan for special reasons like religious tourism, scuba-divers in Aqaba, desert tourism, cultural tourism, bird-watchers and those interested in eco-tourism with the Kingdom having six special nature reserves that house unique animals.

Quite frequently the businessmen and traders coming to Jordan in the past few years from MICE activities, through the Petra Events Management, have come to ask to go on to special excursions to for instance Petra, which has recently become one of the new 7 Wonders of the World, to Jeresh, Madaba and the Dead Sea and Mount Nebo, all with traveling distance from Amman.
One South African delegate attending the recent SOFEX 2008 meet said “it would have been unthinkable to have come to Jordan and not going to Petra,” and his arrangements were arranged through Petra Tours.

Today Petra Tours is branching out in the Kingdom. With its head office in Shmeisani, it has branches in the Four Seasons Hotel, at the US Embassy complex in Amman, has a branch in Irbid, north of Jordan, and is in the process of opening a branch in Aqaba.

The aim is to facilitate travel for incoming tourists and those Jordanians who like to travel outside for their holidays. In the 1990s, the travel and tourism company moved full circle when it started to have its own hotels like Aqaba Gulf Hotel, the Dead Sea Spa Hotel, and the Petra Panorama.

These were considered as affiliates to the Petra Travel and Tourism Company and run independently, but it meant that Petra Tours now handles the inbound travel traffic, ticketing, providing the tourist packages, handling cargo, as well as providing clients with first class accommodation, if clients so wish, through out the Kingdom.

Today the Petra Travel and Tourism Company is a member of local and international tourism organizations including the Jordan Inbound Tour Operators Association (JITOA), the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), the United States Tour Operators Association (USTOA), the Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA), the Society of Incentive and Travel executives (SITE).

These associations are crucial to project a special image for an inbound tour operator including Petra Tours that their tourism is international, its from different parts of the globe including the USA/Canada, Europe, Russia, South Africa, South-East Asia, and Australia and New Zealand and is diversified and where international companies regularly send their employees, managers and executives to exotic places in the world including Africa and Asia and now the Middle East on incentive holidays.

Jordan has become a popular destination for incentive travelers with employees and executives from France for instance regularly coming to such places as Petra and Wadi Rum. The Petra Events Management has regularly made special itineraries for incentive travel groups who wish to come to Jordan on exclusive holidays.

Petra Tours has been ISO certified since 2001. The certification means the company follows professional procedures, there is quality control and monitors itself carefully to produce the best service product.

The first individual is the exact look-a-like of that famous and sometime facetious but lovable Syrian actor Dureid Lahham who I remember him for his Ghawar Al Toushe black comedy roles back in the 1970s. The man who comes judiciously to the mosque every Friday is the spitting image of Dureid/Ghawar or both.

Right down from his wooden-framed glasses to his facial expressions, eyes, features, nose, mouth, he is the same man. I smile and seek to look at the other way to the Imam who would then be starting the khutba.

But then I look around and recognize somebody else, a man in a dishdasha (flowing robe) and hatta (headwear) who is the exact spitting image of an actor I used to see on British film and television back in the 1970s. He looked exactly like Ronald Fraser, a British actor who once starred with Beryl Reid and Susannah York in the Killing of Sister George, a 1967 movie, and many other roles of course.

“What is this”, I say to myself, two people from Syria and Britain in my neighborhood in downtown Amman, “this can’t be possible”. But then I think about the words of God, that we all came from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve and thus we are really brothers and sisters who are similar, have featured connections and even look the exact spitting image! We were but one and now we are many but we are still one colossal, gigantic leap of human development.

Further, when God, the Almighty, created Adam, he send down Angel Gabriel to Earth to take huge sand coverings from East to West, North and South, and take up to the heavens for the creation of Man so the father and the sons after him have children that would represent the different traits, and color of humanity, the Chinese, the Africans, the whites and the Red Indians.

A couple of years ago we had over a young woman from Indonesia. As we would say, her skin was slightly yellow, somewhat squinted eyes, a natural from far south-east Asia, yet she looked very similar to some relative of mine who since died in a remote village in Palestine. Hooray I used to say when I would frequent the West Bank, we have a Chinese amongst us!

What’s the connection? Despite the fact there are thousands upon thousands of miles/kilometers between Indonesia and Palestine, you might ask? Well there isn’t any, apart from the fact that she is a Muslim and can read the Quran, but not really understand a lot of it—no offence to the Indonesians whom I respect very much.

It never ceases to amaze me, geography sometimes does not seem to be making a blind bit of difference to our shared cultural traits, our humanness, our habits, indeed we are bound by something very earthly, our blood, the sense of smell, our hunger and need for sleep, this is what makes us similar, and even one another.

Just a couple of years ago as well, I had a young editor working with me which I actually brought her on board most of all because her late father was a well-known Palestinian revolutionary. As I would go home at night, I’d find her there in front of me. But of course she wasn’t there, but I continued to see her in my mother’s Sri Lanki maid.

Of course the spitting image wasn’t there, but I could tell, the features, the dark skin, the cheek-bones, the nose, the mouth, the slight deportment, and that mellow almost squealing voice, there was an uncanny resemblance as I look at both young women and secretly compare their starkness as divided by language, race and color, yet giving me the same emotional vibes.

So today, when I take a mental trip down memory lane, and want to remember the fond chats, the anger, the discussion, the voice and the almost ideological mellowness, with that incredibly vivacious young editor, all I have to do is look at that maid from Sri Lanka who has become to me a true patriot for the service she provides, and which we Arabs should feel greatly thankful for many years down the road.

Of course as the years go by the image association slowly fades with that young editor, who by now must have grown older, and her face takes an even backer seat at the back of my head but we are as closer together as we think, although our relationships is governed by different prejudices and though patterns underlined by the fact that two people must be one and the same thing. Two anecdotes stand out in particular.

One day in the 1990s I expected to see the chauffer of one of our writers called Imad, and having been taken by the person in front of me for the next two minutes as I chatted I said “you are not the cheerful, talkative guy, I saw last week.” He looked at me and simply said, in a drawl kind of way, “I am his brother.”

“You’re kidding, you are Imad, you are the spitting image of him, listen people, this is he,” I said as they looked and nodded their heads in agreement.

The other incident happened to mean when we just buried someone. I came back to the grave only to see the person we’ve just buried. I was just trying to get the words to say, “we’ve just buried you” till he quickly interjected, “no, no, I am his brother.”

“Fantastic”, I blurted and it would have been had the man really risen from the dead! But this goes to show we are all in the end one and the same, English, Spanish, Jews, Arabs, Germans and Chinese. So why do we fight!

By Dr Marwan Asmar

She is a persistent reader despite the fact our kind of society which is still developing may even look down upon people who read because it is not yet in their social, cultural, psychological make up.

While in other societies it is common to see people holding books and newspapers in public places, such a sight is rarely seen in Jordan or in the different parts of the Arab world where I also lived in. This is why I look with curiosity upon my “reading wife” simply because the reading culture or the book culture is yet to develop. She would munch through myriads of words, flicks pages, and cajole over black text as if it is Turkish delight of meanings and extrapolations.

Its as well as she is not part of the “readerless” society she came from, but she was socialized in this society and later on had the tenacity to pick up books and started to read, opening her mind and indulge in a literature far from her roots, despite the fact she values our Arabic tradition and Islam.

In between getting the house chores, taking the kids to and from school, cooking, cleaning, and taking them, including occasionally me, to the doctors, the flow of her reading today, remains at a constant pace, neither going down nor up but at a steady momentum through out the year.

She manages to find time, closing herself in, finding “reading time” whenever she can. The things that matter she tells me about and even discusses, but modern novels and which many wrongly describe as pulp, she secretly leaves to herself.

I don’t mind me telling you she is putting all of us to shame, since we rarely read and where looking at pages is not really in our blood despite the fact our holy Koran has instructed us it to read, and fathom knowledge even if we have to go to China to acquire it as the saying goes!

She keeps telling me, and sometimes teasing me that we don’t have not the mantle guts to read, nor the energy to understand, we just talk on top of our heads, guided by the easy way out of watching screen and animated images. While I shoot back she too watches television, she replies she is all too in favor of balance.

She makes sure she sticks to a balanced ‘reading’ diet while I sit and envy and sometimes follow suit. She makes it a habit to read on the couch, while the kids are watching television which is frequent during the day, I don’t know how she can actually become so consumed in between the racket of noise, she reads in the bathroom at frequent bouts, and reads in bed despite the fact that she hardly needs to be rocked to sleep late at night.

Hers is an acquired habit of mantle discipline as if she were saying to herself “I’ll put in two or three hours a day to nourish my mind”. She started first reading in the 1980s when she first came to England with one of her first books being Spy Catcher by Peter Wright after the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried to ban it from entering the country. She decided to read the book because of the controversy surrounding it which officials said it compromised intelligence.

For her as well this was to be the beginning of a reading journey that blossomed over the years despite the fact that reading and writing is a solitary, lonely confining experience that is two-track, boiling down to the reader and the book or the writer and the computer or pen and/paper.

Because of the nature of our society that stresses kinship, my wife has been and is able to carry on with her reading without compromising any of her social commitments, and certainly away from prying eyes of my mother, father, sister and so on. Her reading is confined to our house which she would nip down to at certain hours of the day or at night time, when we would go down to bed.

Following Spy Catcher, it was on to the books of the late Edward Said including his Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism and many others of his volumes which are today standard textbooks on post-colonial societies and how they are developing.

I had bought the books to read one day, as I suppose many people do, but they ended up decorating what become I thought a very interesting English and now increasing Arabic book library, complaining at the same instance I had no time to read because of my supposedly other engagements. She would leave me in my complaints and start reading quietly.

As a housewife she is an ambidextrous reader, reading for knowledge, intellect and sheer curiosity, mantle agility and slog as well as for enjoyment and for memory relaxation, at times when she didn’t want to think or strain her brain.

Combined with as diverse number of books on how to write, Middle East politics and biographies especially on Israeli politicians which I had collected over the years, since the mid-1990s, she began to read increasingly late 20th century fiction, of dabbling her eyes, ears and mind with high-paced novels like those of John Grisham’s which she likes very much, and I must confess I do as well.

She taught me how to read books purely for enjoyment despite the fact that some of which required mantle concentration and I would read for professional writing reasons. It occurred to me after a period of lip-reading and eye text formation, readers start to accumulate what can be recognized as “reading experiences” whereby you become fluent in language and sentence construction, especially when you are editing other people’s work.

Inevitably she accumulated a rich reading experience, while her thought process, I am sure had become more methodical, and I say that precisely because I felt my ideas, and the way I expressed them were becoming more systematic as I red to improve the standard of my quality of writing as by now we where reading more fiction that “surrealized” our lives but on paper.

Recently, our family, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, aunts, and the children, packed our belongings in one of the Amman suburbs, and made our way to the Dead Sea. We were all an extended family, seeking to encourage domestic tourism!

The drive took us around 45 minutes of light cruising, with the temperature up as we descended to the lowest point of earth. On either side, and in between rolling patches of desert, there were awesome mountains, looking majestically on the horizon. As we reached into the flat surface area to the shores of the Dead Sea, the mountains become austere, sedimentary and rugged reflecting an almost jumbled up terrain of the past.

Because of Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel in 1994, things changed dramatically. Today posh international 5-Star hotels dominate the beaches. These were built within the last 10 or so years to attract international tourists, to come and lush, expand and twist their bodies in the salt, special mud-water of the Dead Sea while seeking to enjoy the rest of Jordan.

The Dead Sea is a historical marvel rooted in religious doctrine and belief about the area being once inhabited by a community that dared to disobey God, the Almighty, and follow prohibitive practices like sodomy, and that’s why it was turned upside down and a sea instituted in its place.

Besides that, the Dead Sea is a strategic area to the Bethany Beyond Jordan, where Jesus was supposed to have been baptized, it is near Mosaic Madaba and Mt Nebo where Mosses viewed the Holy Land, to Amman, Petra and of course Aqaba, down the highway.

With the auspicious King Hussein Convention Center, the places for 100s of meetings a year, including major international meets as the biannual World Economic Forum, the Dead Sea was transformed into a major tourist attraction.

On one side of the road, there is Sweimeh, a village today benefiting from the touristic infrastructure. For one thing, Sweimeh has come to serve as a pool of labor for the hotels and has revived the village through the tall structures being built there.

Before the development that took place, you could park anywhere, and dip your feet along the loose promenades if you can find the sand and the water in between the scraggy rocks. The Dead Sea beaches were rudimentary, in need of sand-combing.

This time, it was different, the beach fronts, save those that belong to the hotels, have become more organized with convenient facilities of public bathrooms, showers, restaurants, shops, and tables and chairs amidst smooth stretches of sand.

We were dismayed at the JD 3 entrance charge and prepared to move further down the road, but in the end paid and quickly huddled to the water, and glad to use the clean public lavatories which previously were a hard find.

Since we got in at around 5:30, our party wanted to avail themselves of every opportunity of the cool water. The mid-July temperature stood at 40 degrees centigrade, it was hot, it pleasantly bit us but no one cared.

My sister painted her son in mud, his back and legs, ordering him like a sergeant-major to stay in the shallow water, my aunt wanted to dip her feet and legs, while my wife stood watching with her brown sandals with mud oozing from her toes. With crisp walks in between the water, and the beach, she surveyed the land-sea-sky horizons with diligent strides that capped her age.

It was a strange feeling of a heat wave that almost covered our horizons, seeing bobbing men, women and children too concerned with what they wanted to do rather than care of what the neighbors were thinking.

Sweat was pouring from my forehead down my face and at the back of my spine, the hair was wet, and every time, I would pour some fresh water into my galloping throat, it was a delicious feel of a mixture of contrasts with salt on my limbs and trousers that made my eyes burn.

The Dead Sea is incredible, it’s rugged, as if you live in a back century despite the modernization and flash. My seven-year-old son and his cousin tried to splash, but they were quickly told not to because of the salt that would sting their eyes. Once in, you are surrounded by water infested with thick salt that corrugate to produce rock formations that are very difficult to break, these pimpled your feet, and that’s why you needed some kind of protection.

At one point, it was almost like a steam bath. Having taking my shoes and socks off, the earth, mingled with salt, mud, sand was scorching hot and almost beat the souls of my feet to the extent I needed to get in the water to cool off, but by then I started to dig unwillingly into the water. In put my hand, gulped a piece of mud and put it on the side, and it was literally piping hot.

People were everywhere on the beach, sun-bathing, dressed up, sitting on chairs, some eating, and some watching beyond the horizon, watching what used to be Palestine, and now Israel, in the evening streamlined by lights through its colonial-settlement formations, put there to protect its security.

Families huddle together dipping themselves into the water. Some went in trunks, few dared it in bikinis, some just slighted lifted their black abayas, long dresses and Jelbabs. People were standing, some sitting, others on their backs floating at a snail’s pace with the current gently pushing them whilst enjoying the steaming humid air of the sun and the deep blue sky.

Along you can see old ladies sitting in chairs in the water, no doubt their feet kicked in the mud, while the water reaching up to their ankles. The water rejuvenates the muscles and exhilarates the limbs.

I was told in one hotel, the Dead Sea Spa Hotel, which is one of the beach hotels started in the early 1990s, specializes in mud health treatments with experts from abroad to lean down those stiff bodies, ankles and thighs.

Oh yes, whilst in water I saw the bikini-line women, the ones you see in pictures when the subject of mud baths come up. She was covered in mud from head to toe, from the face right down, excluding the chest of course and the bikini bottom. It was kind of strange because many are used to seeing skin, tight or saggy, and not a bikini-clad bar of mud chocolate.

Still the Dead Sea mud is good for your skin, everyone said so. Standing next to my wife, sitting down actually, I saw two young dolly birds from nowhere, they were vivacious, pure skin, untouched by the mud which gave me memory flashbacks of my 1970s days on Hastings beach in the UK.

My wife caught me staring but I was actually distracted by my steaming glasses and the hotness of the situation. As you grow older, the wear and tear of looking into the computer screen takes their toll, and you start to descent into an archaic physical and mantle oblivion where imagination is better than action. I told my wife, “I remember you when you were in your early 20s” with her replying “I still have what it takes.

Two-mid career fogies that still think of today as if it was yesterday, they substitute the physical for the imaginary with occasional practice of winks and nods, and symbolic techniques that redeem our true selves through stiff upper lip and slurping behavior.

My brother in law had to look the other way, but was caught by his wife, who stopped talking to him. They were a good deal younger than us and the question of jealousy was still more nuptial for them.

One little guy enjoyed himself tremendously, my three-year-old nephew. After getting caught in the sweaty heat, he moved to one shower on the beach being helped by one of the maids, who had her hand on the water catch for the next 20 minutes, so the little guy can have streaming water roll down over his young body.

She was wrenched in water, but may have liked it as well, getting soaked through the heat and a brief subliminal hooray for her mundane chores of housekeeping among screaming kids.

It was sunset by now, around 7:30, we shifted our positions further to the blue water, surrounded by tufts of grass. Here, it seemed hotter, more humid, it was a wrong move because the water actually generated whiffs of air that hit you face in the face, or so according to my wife who was somewhat agitated by the move.

The journey to the Dead Sea was pleasant. On the way back to Amman the sun was dipping into the horizons and evening was setting in. The temperature then stood at 38 centigrade but started to slide as our car ascended the hills of Jordan into Amman.

On top of one mountain, the temperature dropped to 27 centigrade, and with it we melted into the coolness of the air. Thank God, we thought, car air conditioners turned off, windows opened. It’s always better to feel the natural air rather than the synthetic stuff. Till next time!

Dr Marwan Asmar

Instead the Nakba of 1948 is remembered in passing. Deaths and destructions of the time is treated as a casual event. Sure the Nakba is bemoaned, but the depth of the tragedy continues to be lacking as Israel is an established fact which nobody has the right to question!

Today Israel is seen as a de facto state with a legal entity, a member of the world community, an entity with military and economic muscle as well as a democratic state. The way it has come to exist, although very disturbing, people, Jews and worldwide liberals have for a long time tried to brush under the carpet the secrets of massacres, destruction and general mayhem and of the switching of one set of people by another.

Established Zionist politicians and Israel’s military leaders understood there would come a day when the cat would be let out of the bag and the terrible secret of the massacres, transfers, expulsions, whole destructions of villages would become known to the whole world.

That’s why they’ve sought to legitimize their entity since 1948 by wrapping their existence through an ideology of literature and books written in English for the hearts and minds of western audiences and politicians. Some biographies and autobiographies have been cleverly made written in anecdotal style of writing of Jewish long last return. The Palestinians, the injured party, were secondary, peripheral, meaningless, as if they didn’t exist.

Over a 60-year period politicians since David Ban Gurion, the first Zionist leader who justified the terror tactics against the Palestinians, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres, have all sought to write a “history of their struggles” in Palestine/Israel and how they made it bloom.

While Golda Meir for instance touched on her human aspects of her political career, Shimon Peres tried to provide a political history of Israel, and the political actions during the pre-state days of the 1930s and 1940s.

The biographies and histories soon became powerful weapons and public relations exercises to buy time, strength and American more for Israel was built on the blood of the Palestinian people, young and old, men and women, children and toddlers.

Through their Jewish organizations and paramilitary groups like the Haganah, the Palmach, its strike force, the Irgun and the Stern gang, some of whom were trained and supplied by the British authorities, and facts that have been documented, 13 massacres were committed in 1948 alone, and up to 100 massacres according to non other than Jewish historians who have been documenting what their Jewish comrades were doing.

One or two massacres like Dier Yassin in which around 245 women, men, children, old, pregnant women were slaughtered through guns point-blank are slowly being remembered for their ferocity in which many Jews have became proud of.

It was 8 April 1948, a day that should be a black day not only for Palestinians, Arabs, the world and even for Israelis themselves who sought to establish their ‘paradise’ come what may.

Others massacres over Palestine were ‘small’, as low as five people, but many went up to 50 and a 100. The massacres began roughly as early as 1946 when Zionist terrorists bombed the King David Hotel in which 91 people were killed but they continued in 1947 and increased through out 1948 to grab as much land as possible.

Terming it Plan Dalet, the aim of the Jewish paramilitaries that were strongly organized and together with the reservists had made than 100,000 armed men, against around a 14,000 Arab army, wanted to take as much land as possible outside to that allocated to them by United Nations 191 resolutions dividing historical Palestine into two states one Arab and one Israeli.

Plan Dalet was an attempt to drive the Palestinians out through instilling fear into the local Palestinian villagers and town dwellers and force them to leave their land and their houses. People were panic-stricken, a mass-flight was induced, loudspeakers bellowing in the air by the Israelis themselves telling people to leave for their own safety, sirens wailed.

Palestinians were made into refugees over night. They left under bombardment. Of the Palestinians captured many were killed as a lesson to others, that they too would be killed if they harbored any signs of resistance.

Despite the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee urging people not to leave, Palestinians made an exit to avoid what they were hearing about the massacres, and in honor of their women and in fear for their children; stories were being spread by non other than the Jews that women were being rapped and killed and it would be best to leave in that situations.

Palestinians left with the keys to their homes, some at first sought refuge in nearby villages, some went over into neighboring countries into Lebanon and Syria where the idea of borders were still rudimentary. People genuinely believed it would be a matter of days and weeks before they could return to toiling their lands, and they didn’t fathom the fact that they their exile would become permanent.

Some, still alive today said that after May 15 1948, and when they were exiled to Jordan they tried to go back via a taxi, which was doubly difficult in them days, found that their homes had become occupied by Jewish families.

These homes were ironically, the lucky ones. Other villages were quickly decimated soon after they were depopulated and emptied of their inhabitants.

To erase the semblance of a prior Palestinian entity more than 500 villages were destroyed in 1948, and many of these were given Jewish names to cover the evil deeds.

When the Palestinians left, the key to their homes became a permanent symbol of their lost return, of homes and houses taken over by working class Jews, middle class Jews, Jewish liberals, university professors and extremists who since then have had no qualms about living in somebody else’s quarters or taking away their homes.

Whilst they may have no qualms, a body of literature was built through out the years particularly after the 1960s examining just why the Palestinians were made into refugees and increasingly questioning the Israeli narrative that it was calls from the Arab countries that told the people to leave.

Erskine Childers, an Irish journalist, first started the ball-rolling with his early 1960s article in the Spectator London magazine stating he found no evidence to suggest that it was the Arab countries that were responsible for the creation of Palestinian refugees but on the contrary it was the then Jewish paramilitaries that forced the exodus.

Palestinian academic Dr Walid Al Khalidi sought to expose the Zionist myth, then it was Rosemary Al Sayigh, a British writer and academic who wrote extensively on the Palestinian uprooting, and in the 1980s Michael Palumbo wrote on 1948.

These writings may have influenced a body of Jewish academics that also begun to examine their own creation as an Israeli state. Dubbed as the new historians, they gained prominence in the 1990s onwards, and by examining state archives made available concluded that Israeli officials were indeed behind the Palestinian flight from their towns and villages and homes.

The author is the Responsible Chief Editor of Jo Magazine, a monthly produced in Amman. He worked previously as the Managing Editor of the Star, also in Amman between 1993 till 2003 and writes frequently on Arab and Palestinian affairs.

The Jordan Inbound Tour Operators Association (JITOA) says the tourism industry is particularly sensitive because many of the services it provides are directly linked to energy whether it’s in transport, catering, food and beverage, housekeeping and in arranging sight seeing tours.

JITOA is closely monitoring the situation, sending a memorandum to their members about the new hikes, and stressing it is presently meeting with government officials to try and limit the impact of new energy prices on the tourism industry.

JITOA Chairman Awni Kawar says the new hikes—varying from 3.33 percent for gasoline to 76 percent for diesel and kerosene to 126 percent for cooking gas—would create a knock-on effect on the tourism sector across the board from tour operators, hoteliers, touristic bus companies, and restaurants that will now be under increasing pressure to earmark their prices upwards.

Experts point out the results of this will undermine Jordan’s competitiveness in the international market in its bid to lure more tourists to the Kingdom, and make it more expensive vis-à-vis other destinations like Sharm Al Sheikh and Eilat.

Up till this last measure, Jordanian tourism was going well, being given the thumbs by many international operators who forecasted another growth year for 2008 similar to 2007 that saw revenues increase by 13 percent to $2.11 billion, a contribution of 13.4 percent to the country’s GDP.

Kawar, a tour operator himself, and general manager of Petra Tours, says if the energy increases remain in place, it would certainly pose great challenges to the future of tourism in Jordan and may mean wasted opportunities to the work that has been done to make the industry one of the most formidable forces as the number 2 sector in the Jordanian economy.

Over the years much investment was poured in the tourism industry. Between 1996 and 2006 the rate of cumulative investment had risen to JD 1.552 billion while today the tourism sector employs 33,000 and is indirectly involved for the generation of 130,000 through out the economy.

It is now feared the tourism sector could move into a recession if fuel and energy prices are not contained and a deal is not reached with the government to offset the raising imminent costs. For it’s part the government is in an unenviable position saying it had to raise energy prices because of the international oil prices and the fact continued subsidy on energy continues to drain the national budget.

However, the government is also committed to its five-year National Tourism Strategy drawn up in 2004 to make the tourism sector an export industry and where tourism infrastructure had been developed and top five-star hotels had been built in areas touristic areas like the Amman, Dead Sea, Petra and Aqaba.

In the final analysis, many like Kawar believe the government will not renegade on its position and tourism and a solution will ultimately be found and the situation and jitters in the tourism sector be contained.

As evidence of this is the holding of the Jordan Travel Mart (JTM) in the Dead Sea between 10-12 February that brought tour operators from the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil to meet their Jordanian counterparts in a bid to increase tourism traffic from the Americas to Amman.

“Many of our tour operator members participated in the event that proved very successful as a prelude to establishing contact for tour operators on both sides of the Atlantic,” says Kawar whilst praising the JTM as a great business effort in public-private sector cooperation.

The JTM is the brainchild of the Jordan Tourism Board, a public body that seeks to market Jordan internationally as a tourism destination. Its branch in the USA, under the directorship of Malia Asfour has made the travel mart a dream come true, as she said during the holding of the event.

“As a result of this touristic business event, we at JITOA believe the government is a whole is committed to the tourism sector as a growth industry in the long-term, however, the oil and energy hikes certainly pose food for thought and demands immediate action,” Kawar adds.

Tour operators are particularly upset because they say they had already made their plans for 2008 and signed deals with international tour operators and clients on prices calculated on levels that existed in 2007 and it would be difficult to re-adjust, and are fearful they would be left in the lurch.

In the memo to his members Kawar advises tour operators to tell their international clients that JITOA is doing all it can to limit the effect of the latest hikes on the current agreements and contracts that have been already reached and negotiations are going on.

But its early days yet with the situation being so fluid and the overall general prices in the economy still increasing with little control but it is expected that government ministries will step in as the next days to monitor more effectively the market.