Joseph Sarkis was appointed minister of tourism in the new cabinet. Here, he talks to Executive about this year’s downturn, the balance between security and tourism, and his hopes for public-private sector cooperation in promoting Lebanon as a major tourist destination. E To what extent has the tourist sector suffered this year? It is obvious that the security and political situation has had an impact on tourism in 2005. However, if we look at statistics up to the end of October and compare incoming visitors with the same period in 2004 – which was an exceptional year – we see a decrease of only 13.5%. This is not a dramatic drop if you consider what happened during the early months of this year. In 2004, we had a total of around 1.3 million visitors. This year we are already at 970,000 and still have two months to reduce the gap.
