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With its rock-hewn ancient city of Petra, lunar-like landscape of Wadi Rum and a medical tourism drive, Jordan is luring back foreign visitors scared off by regional upheaval and jihadist attacks. Abundant natural wonders and ancient treasures have long attracted tourists to the kingdom, traditionally seen as a haven of peace in a war-ravaged region.
But after the Arab Spring uprisings convulsed the Middle East in 2011 and the Islamic State group (IS) later rampaged across neighboring Syria and Iraq, visitor numbers slumped.
Jordan welcomed 7 million tourists in 2010, but arrivals plunged to around 3 million in each of the following two years, according to tourism board head Abed Al Razzaq Arabiyat.
Efforts to reverse the slide suffered a major setback in 2016 with a string of attacks in the kingdom, a member of the US-led
alliance against IS.
A Canadian tourist was among 10 people killed in a shooting rampage claimed by the jihadists in Karak, home to one of the region’s biggest Crusader castles.
But the spillover from the Syrian conflict has since abated and in 2017 tourist arrivals rebounded to more than 4 million, officials say.
“Jordan has proved to be a safe haven in a region which is witnessing turmoil,” Tourism Minister Lina Mazhar Annab told AFP in an interview.
“Jordan is a very safe country. We are proving to be safer than a lot of European countries. It is a matter of perception.”
The country’s goal is to bring annual tourist arrivals back up to 7 million by 2020, she said, guiding a group of visitors through the steep paths
of the ancient Nabataean city of Petra with its rose-pink cliffs.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site, which featured in the Hollywood film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, was once a major crossroads for caravans transporting Arabian incense, Indian spices and Chinese silks.
Historical jewels
Today Jordan’s historical jewels are a major draw.
“I came here because it’s a country with huge cultural wealth,” said French tourist Emmanuel Reneaume, visiting the Amman Citadel perched at the top of a hill in the capital.
“Just behind us there are ruins, a Roman temple, a Byzantine church and an Umayyad mosque. It’s exciting,” he said.
Jordan boasts 21,000 archaeological and historical sites that span millennia, according to the tourism board. They include the Roman ruins of Jerash, the Dead Sea and Wadi al-Kharrar, or Bethany Beyond
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