War-inflicted slowdown ends robust year for tourism in Middle East
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The Great Pyramid of Giza (left), believed to be built by monarch Khufu or Cheops, is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the complex.
ST PHOTO: SALLY LAM
Christine Chung
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MIDDLE EAST – The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which erupted in early October, has halted international tourism to Israel and severely blunted travel to neighbouring countries in a ripple effect spreading across the entire Middle East.
While the slowdown in international visitors is only one of the war’s economic repercussions in the region, it poses a significant threat to the economies of Egypt, Jordan and other nations heavily dependent on tourism, and has swiftly reversed a banner year of travel in the Middle East.
The war has affected all segments of the travel industry, with international travel operators scaling back or postponing excursions, cruise lines redeploying ships and airlines dramatically reducing service.
And many travellers, heeding government warnings and their own worries, are increasingly wary about visiting the region, prompting waves of cancellations.
Local tour operators fear what a protracted war would do to a promising and growing industry.
“We foresaw the Middle East evolving into the ‘New Europe’ with the Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement and Saudi Arabia’s integration into the tourism system,” said Mr Khaled Ibrahim, a Cairo-based consultant for Amisol Travel Egypt.
“We all hope that this war does not escalate and shatter the hopes that people – Arabs, Israelis and Iranians alike – have been holding on to.”
Amisol Travel in Egypt has received only 40 to 50 per cent of its typical bookings for the months between February and September 2024, he said.
Mr Hussein Abdallah, general manager of Lebanon Tours and Travels in Beirut, believes that “all of Lebanon is 100 per cent safe” but he has not had a single booking since the war started.
Now, he said, tourist sites such as the Jeita Grotto and Unesco World Heritage site Baalbek Temples that usually receive thousands of visitors daily are empty.
“Demand for most Middle Eastern countries is worsening,” said Mr Olivier Ponti, a vice-president at ForwardKeys, a data-analysis firm that tracks global air travel reservations.
In the three weeks after Oct 7, flight bookings to the Middle East dropped by 26 per cent compared with bookings made for the same time period in 2019.
And inbound tickets to Israel fell below negative 100 per cent, compared with the equivalent period in 2019, as cancellations exceeded the number of new tickets issued.
The Israel-Hamas conflict has also “dented consumer confidence in travelling elsewhere”, Mr Ponti said.
According to a ForwardKeys analysis, flight bookings to all regions of the world slumped, dipping 5 per cent in the immediate weeks after the war, compared with the corresponding weeks in 2019.
Abrupt halt to a banner year of business
The war came at a time when tourism in the Middle East was on a robust uptick from the height of the pandemic.
From January through July this year, the number of visitor arrivals to the Middle East was 20 per cent above the same period in 2019, making it the only region in the world to surpass pre-pandemic levels, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation.
Just a week before the war, Mr Ahmed Issa, Egypt’s top tourism official, said there was “unprecedented demand for travel into Egypt”, with about 10 million people visiting in the first half of this year.
The government, hoping for a record 15 million visitors in 2023, had been seeking to increase the number of hotel rooms and available airplane seats, to encourage more private investment in tourism.
Air service into Israel has been more than halved, with a little more than 2,000 flights scheduled in November compared with the approximately 5,000 flights that flew during November 2022, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.
Major American carriers, which suspended regular service to the main international airport in Tel Aviv soon after the fighting began, have not resumed flights.
Airlines have also suspended flights to neighbouring countries.
German airline Lufthansa paused flight service to Israel and Lebanon. Wizz Air and Ryanair, budget carriers based in Europe, have temporarily stopped flying to Jordan.
Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, geographically among the nations closest to the conflict, are also highly dependent on tourism.
A staff member waiting for customers at a restaurant in Lebanon’s coastal historical city of Byblos on Nov 10.
PHOTO: AFP
The sector contributes between 12 and 26 per cent of total earnings from abroad to these three nations, according to a report from S&P Global Ratings, an international credit rating provider.
“These countries, immediate neighbours of Israel and Gaza, are more vulnerable to a slowdown in tourism, given concerns about security risks and social unrest amid high external vulnerabilities,” said the report published on Nov 6.
“Further deepening of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza or a serious escalation in the West Bank could lead to a new wave of refugee flows that would burden economies in the region.”
In 2022, tourism accounted for about 3 per cent of total earnings from abroad into Israel, making it considerably less reliant on the sector than neighbouring countries.
But international travel put some US$5 billion (S$6.7 billion) into state coffers and indirectly employed about 200,000 people, according to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.
Cancelled cruises, changed itineraries
Many cruise lines and tour operators have cancelled trips or revised itineraries that included Israel and it is unclear when departures will resume.
Intrepid Travel, a global tour company that offers more than 1,150 trips on every continent, shelved 47 departures to Israel this year, a company spokesperson said.
While Israel is a fairly small destination for Intrepid, chief executive officer James Thornton said, that is not the typical situation for other Middle East countries.
Normally, “Morocco, Jordan and Egypt would be in our top five destinations globally”, he said, adding that cancellations to these countries have spiked since the war began.
About half of Intrepid’s customers who had booked trips to Egypt and Jordan before the year-end have cancelled or rescheduled, he said.
Late autumn and winter is usually the peak season for Middle East cruises, but several major cruise lines have cancelled port calls in Israel through next year and pulled their ships out of the region.
Earlier in November, Norwegian became the first major line to cancel all 2024 sailings to and from Israel, saying that it would take time before people felt safe returning to the country even after the war ends.
Royal Caribbean has also removed Israel from all of its 2024 itineraries
MSC Cruises, which has cancelled Israel port calls until April, is also skipping Aqaba, Jordan and Egypt on some of its itineraries. It will also redeploy two of its ships. NYTIMES
