‘Ambitious, but realistic’ National Tourism Strategy 2021-2025 launched

AMMAN — The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on Tuesday launched the National Tourism Strategy for the years 2021-2025. 

The strategy is in line with the government’s economic priorities programme, which included the tourism sector, according to the ministry.

Tourism Minister Nayef Al Fayez presented the strategy in the presence of ministers of Transport, Labour, directors of the Jordan Tourism Board, dean of the Mosaic Institute, and a number of stakeholders.

According to Fayez, the Cabinet recently approved the 2021-2025 National Tourism Strategy. 

“The strategy seeks to surpass tourism figures recorded in 2019 through the next years,” he said during the launch event.

Fayez noted that the strategy, focuses on five main aspects: Tourism product development, human resources, marketing, heritage management and protection.

“We are aiming to double the number of tourists as well as tourism revenues by 2025,” Fayez added, noting that this strategy is a continuation of previous strategies and it is in line with the sustainable development goals.

“We consider it a golden opportunity for the tourism sector to achieve better numbers in the coming years. They are ambitious, but realistic and applicable numbers,” the minister continued.

Approximately 5.3 million tourists visited the Kingdom in 2019, and the tourism revenues amounted to JD4.1 billion, Fayez said.

The minister indicated that the Kingdom’s tourism income recorded an increase during the first 11 months of 2021, to reach JD1.692 billion, compared with JD1 billion in 2020, citing data from the Central Bank of Jordan.

“The first two months of 2020 before the COVID-19 crisis and the airport closures, tourism revenues and numbers were way better than 2019 already, until the middle of March,” he added.

Fayez mentioned that the total number of tourists coming to the Kingdom in 2021 exceeded 2.1 million, while the number of overnight tourists reached 1.8 million.

The strategy will mainly work on raising the number of tourists to how it was in 2019 by 2025, and to increase the total revenues as in 2019 by 2024, and increasing direct employment in tourism to exceed 2019 figures by 2023, Fayez noted.

According to the minister, transit tourism has a positive impact on the sector and its supporting sectors, such as restaurants and transport.

“In a period of four months, we received 200,000 visitors in Jordan for 14 days, which had a significant impact,” he said.

“The ministry seeks to create comprehensive economic growth through real and sustainable tourism products and experiences, in addition to taking all measures to recover the tourism sector from the impact of the pandemic,” Fayez noted.

The minister highlighted that the tourism sector was the first sector to vaccinate 90 per cent of its staff.

“The development of the strategy seeks to enable the tourism sector overcome the damage resulted from the pandemic, which were represented in four stages: Response, recovery, restart and reforms,” Fayez said.