Petra witnessed 118% rise in tourist footfall in 2021 — PDTRA

AMMAN — The number of Petra visitors in 2021 witnessed a 118 per cent increase compared with 2020, which saw a significant drop due to the pandemic, the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority (PDTRA) announced on Sunday.

According to a PDTRA statement, a total of 236,088 tourists of all nationalities visited the rose-red city in 2021, comprising 135,064 foreigners, 16,026 non-Jordanian Arabs and 84,776 Jordanians.

The last four months of 2021 accounted for the majority of the tourists with some 150,000 visitors of all nationalities, highlighting a continuation in the recovery process of the city’s tourism sector. 

PDTRA Chief Commissioner Suleiman Farajat said that the increase in the number of the tourists in the last four months of 2021 also benefited the owners of tourist facilities and local communities, referring to the "strong indicators for the tourist movement to come back to normal".

Farajat said that the improvement in the tourist situation is associated with the global epidemiological conditions and the mechanisms of addressing it over the coming weeks, expressing hope for the next period to witness further tourist growth. 

The statement added that the PDTRA is about to finish several projects that will serve the tourism sector. The authority also received several investment applications in the hotel sector, which will increase the number of hotel rooms to around 4,000 by the end of 2022 compared with 2,600, the number of hotel rooms at the end of 2019.