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Petra Tours—A Corporate Profile

From a small office in the downtown area to a large complex in Shmeisani! This is the story of the Petra Travel and Tourism Company, affectionately known and branded as Petra Tours established in 1965.

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.