Cultural capital

ENAR

  Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud said in October that he expected 2010 to have been another bumper year for Lebanese tourism, predicting that revenues from the industry will hit nearly $8 billion by the end of the year, compared to $7.2 billion in 2009. After 2009’s record-setting revenues, expectations and hype were running on overdrive this year, and not without good reason: the first nine months of 2010 mark another record for Lebanon’s tourism industry, despite the slowdown during the normally booming month of August due to Ramadan. According to the Ministry of Tourism, the number of tourists totaled some 1.694 million from January to September, compared to 1.439 million during the first nine months of 2009, a 17.8 percent increase. The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) expects the real growth rate of the industry to be 11.3 percent by the end of 2010; last year, Lebanon’s tourism sector