Tourism Development in Jordan (In the Occasion of the World Tourism Day)

           All the tourism activities celebrate the International Tourism Day on 27 September 2007. The International Tourism Organization has launched a slogan for this year under ( Tourism opens the doors for woman).This aims at showing opportunities provided by this sector to woman in cooperation with the United Nations Fund for Woman Development.Jordan has since early time implemented the concept of this slogan, by establishing institutional mechanisms and drawing strategies that ensure streamiling woman in the comprehensive development which includes tourism.

      Tourism plays a vital role in the Jordanian economy and contributes to the improvement of the economic and social welfare of the Jordanians in the long run. The development of tourism industry has been considered as a priority due to its high contribution to the economy compared with the other sectors. It provides hard currency and helps create new jobs.Therefor, the National Tourism Strategy has been established and its message has been identified based on a  sustainable development of the tourism economy sector ,through the partnership between the public and private sectors and the establishment of the  civil society.Such partnership will help increase job creation and encourage individual initiatives in establishing  private enterprises, improveing social situation and increasing the tourism sector profits and the country revenues.

      The expectations of the tourism sector in the Middle East are so promising.The diversity of the nature and the deep-rooted cultural  heritage ,which has been recently proved by the announcement of Petra as one of the seven world wonders, would be good factors for attracting tourists from the region and the world at large .

 While celebrating this occasion,Jordan has achieved a significant progress in the field of tourism, the number of arrivals has increased from 5.5million in 2002 to 9.5 million 2006,a growth of about 72%.This progress has resulted in the development of the tourism utilities and the other secondary activities as shown in the following table.

        The number of museums visitors and touristic sites was about 1.3 million , of which there were 353 thousand Jordanians with a percentage of  27% out of the total and about (960) thousand non- Jordanians with a percentage of 73%.

      The increase in the number of tourist utilities has resulted in creating new jobs in this sector. The total number of employees was about 21 thousand, of which about 63% working in hotels, about 14% in travel agancies, about  6% in  rent a car companies and about 5% in tourist hotels.

       The results of the job creation survey, which was conducted by the Department of Statistics for the first time show that the hotels and restaurant sector has created new jobs in 2006 amounted to 3500 against 2400 lost jobs. This shows that the sector gives about 1100 net new jobs.

      The surveys show that the tourism sector was the most important sector in which the Jordanian employment substituted of the foreign employment in 2006. on the other hand the foreign employment retreated by 360 jobs in net, against 1500 jobs for the Jordanians in net.

    Job creation in the Hotels and Restaurant Sector, 2006