Jordan Tourism Board sets goals for increased numbers of visitors this year

AMMAN — The Jordan Tourism Board (JTB) is working on a plan to boost promotions to the country’s attractions with the aim of attracting tourists from the Gulf counties, Asia and Europe, an official said on Thursday.

“As part of the plan, we will soon start running commercials and launch promotional activities to attract tourists from these markets,” JTB Director General Abdul Razzaq Arabiyat told The Jordan Times on Thursday.

“We will start by launching activities in the Gulf countries,” he said, noting that the JTB will place posters and ads in the main commercial centres and malls in the Gulf countries as well as distribute flyers and brochures highlighting the Kingdom’s tourist attractions and variety of tourism.

The official said they expect a rise in the number of tourists coming to Jordan this season. “There has been a rise in the number of visitors and in the sector’s revenues since the beginning of this year,” he noted, adding “based on data received from inbound tourism travel agencies, there is an increase in bookings to visit the Kingdom this year which is promising. Thus, we expect the numbers to continue to grow”. 

According to official figures, the number of tourists coming to the Kingdom rose by 8.7 per cent in the first four months of this year, reaching around 1.539 million visitors. 

The percentage of overnight visitors during the January-April period of this year increased by 8.5 per cent when compared to last year, according to JTB figures.

Of the total number of visitors over this period, 311,667 were from the Gulf countries, a 20.5 per cent increase when compared to the same period of last year.

The tourism sector, which contributes 11 per cent of the country’s economy annually, directly employs 51,000 individuals, 82.5 per cent of whom are Jordanians, in addition to tens of thousands of indirect jobs, according to the Tourism Ministry’s figures.

The Kingdom currently counts around 28,000 hotel rooms with around 92 per cent of the tourism facilities being located in Amman, Aqaba and the Dead Sea. Almost 90 per cent of the workers in the sector are present in these three locations.