Hotel reservations in Petra (southern Jordan), one of the New 7 Wonders of the World, which is the country’s main tourist attraction, have plummeted by approximately 80% in April due to the repercussions of the Iran war.
The president of the Council of Commissioners of the Development and Tourism Authority of the Petra region, Adnan al Sawair, told state television Al Mamlaka that in addition, cancellations for May had already reached almost 50%, something he attributed to “the repercussions of the regional situation and its impact on tourism.”
Al Sawair said that Petra’s tourism sector started the year with “positive indicators” in the number of visitors, but they quickly decreased and even reached “levels close to zero” due to the situation in the Middle East.
He recalled that Petra is almost completely dependent on tourism revenues, while indicating that all hotels in the region “operate normally and without interruptions” despite the concerns of tourists after the launches of attacks by Iran against Jordan in retaliation for the war launched by the United States and Israel against their territory.
According to information from the EFE agency, given this situation, the Jordanian authorities are working to attract foreign tourists residing in the Persian Gulf and Egypt by land, in addition to reducing entrance fees for visitors “with the aim of increasing demand and promoting receptive tourism.”
The Petra site is considered one of the New 7 Wonders of the World and was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985, for being a historic complex excavated entirely in rock about 2,000 years ago by the Nabataeans, an Arab tribe that inhabited southeastern Palestine and Syria, on the border with the Hellenic world.