AMMAN — Tourism stakeholders commended Wednesday efforts by the Jordan Tourism Board
(JTB) to encourage tourists to visit the Kingdom through supported chartered
flights.
اضافة اعلان
Charters are irregular flights, organized when there
is no flight scheduled to a certain destination. JTB supports the price of the
trip to encourage tourists to book to Jordan, tourism expert Adel Amin told
Jordan
News.
In a statement to
Jordan News, JTB said that
185 tourists from Slovakia arrived in Aqaba Tuesday on a chartered flight that
was supported by the board. The flight is the first in a series that will
continue until the end of the year, with an average stay of seven to 14 nights
for each tourist.
Tourism Minister Nayef Al-Fayez said in the
statement that the arrival of the charter indicated the continuation of tourism
turnout and the willingness of tourists to visit Jordan during the low season.
JTB Director-General Abdelrazq Al-Arabyiat said that
the charter schedule will increase hotel occupancy in Aqaba by 7,000 hotel
rooms during June and July, with 14,000 beds at five-star hotels.
Arabyiat said that the tourists will visit several
sites in Jordan, including the famed rose-red city of Petra in trips organized
by a local travel agent.
Local transportation in Jordan should also be
supported to facilitate the movement of tourists to and from all tourist
attraction, Hassan Al-Ababneh, a tourism expert told
Jordan News Wednesday.
“Tourists who have no particular itinerary,
transport to internal attractions should be organized and subsidized to enrich
their stay and spread the benefit among tourist suppliers at all sites”,
Ababneh explained.
He praised JTB’s endeavors in supporting the tourism
sector’s growth by subsidizing charter flights.
Raed Abdelhaq, a former president of the Jordan Tour
Guides Association, said that tourists coming through such flights should be
encouraged for daily visits to tourist destinations such as Petra, the Dead
Sea, and Jerash to ensure the maximum benefit to all entities in the sector
including guides, travel agents and local transporters.
Mahmoud Al-Khasawneh, member of the Jordan Society
for Travel Agents, told
Jordan News that flight will help the tourism
sector continue recovering from the repercussions of COVID-19, during which
tourism came to complete standstill.
Khasawneh called for increasing this type of support
to bring in more tourists to the Kingdom and keep the momentum tourists of
turnout, especially during the low season, which is June to September.
According to official figures, tourism accounts for 14
percent of the Kingdom’s GDP and employs 55,000 people.
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