Hoping for customers, Ahmad Nassar is dusting and polishing the trinkets and souvenirs in his tourist shop in Madaba, an ancient town in central Jordan known for its early Christian mosaics.
The coronavirus pandemic has been a disaster for Jordan's tourism industry and for its economy as a whole, which suffered its worst contraction in decades last year.Now foreign tourists are starting to trickle back, and the situation is looking more hopeful, he said.
Officials this month announced special measures for Jordan's 'golden triangle', which includes famous sites such as the ancient city of Petra, Wadi Rum and crusader castles, closing the area off to all but the fully vaccinated. "At the height of the crisis, hotel occupancy did not exceed 2% or 3%," Abdul Hakeem al-Hindi, the head of Jordan Hotels Association, told Reuters.
The government is also taking other steps to get the number of foreign tourists back to the record 3 million visitors Jordan received in 2019, many of whom arrived on low cost European carriers led by Ryanair which resumed flights last month.
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