Last year may have marked a renaissance for Lebanon’s tourism industry, with the 1.8 million-plus visitors far eclipsing the pre-civil war high of 1.4 million in 1974, but 2010 looks set to put it to shame: recent figures from Byblos Bank showed some 732,855 tourists entered the country in the first five months of the year, 28.6 more than in 2009.
With figures like this, the draw of Beirut’s glamorous night life and upscale beach clubs, the tranquil snowcapped peaks and historic antiquities look set to earn the country a healthy sum. Last year tourism brought in some $7 billion, around 20 percent of gross domestic product.
Until now, Southern Lebanon has been largely excluded from this vision, with the country’s neglected backyard better known for its role in regional conflict than its allure for sun-worshipping holidaymakers.
But things might be changing.
“We haven’t even scratched the surface yet,” says Lebanese Minister of Tourism Fadi Abboud. “We could seriously improve tourism in the south.”
According to Abboud, this year alone has seen $300 million pumped into developing the tourism sector in South Lebanon, mainly focused on building new establishments and refurbishing existing ones. While this figure could not be independently confirmed, what is clear is that after four years of relative peace in the south and Lebanon’s record-breaking tourism season in 2009, there are signs that the region might finally be primed for vacationers.
Viva la Resistance touristique
At first mention, Mleeta does not sound like the ideal spot for a tourism venture. The hill — located just northwest of Nabatieh — was bombarded regularly during the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon and today red and white tape still marks areas where unexploded ordnance has not yet been cleared.
While this might have dissuaded most investors, Hezbollah chose the spot to build a sprawling 60,000 square meters, $10 million tourist complex, pioneering the concept of “resistance tourism” in Lebanon.
Perched on a summit nearly 1,500 meters above sea level, Mleeta was a major base of operations for Hezbollah’s guerrilla attacks against Israeli troops up until the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. The tourist complex is dedicated to their struggle: visitors follow trails through firing positions and bunkers, view Hezbollah’s arsenal of rockets and anti-aircraft guns and see equipment and weapons captured from the Israelis.
“The idea here is that people shall know their history, the history of the resistance in Lebanon,” a Hezbollah spokesman for the Mleeta project identified as Abu Hadi said.
So far, the concept seems popular. On May 25, the day marking the 10-year anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from the south and Mleeta’s official opening date to the public, 21,000 people visited the site. By mid-June some 180,000 visitors had come to Mleeta, according to Hezbollah’s figures.
Abu Hadi said that in the future a fee of $4 for adults and $2 for children would be levied on visitors, but that this money would go to charity. With increased traffic along the roads to in the area, Abu Hadi said local businesses would benefit and new shops and restaurants were opening. He also said the price of land surrounding the project had doubled since the opening, although this was not independently verified.
The educational park at Mleeta is just the beginning: within the next year or two the project will expand significantly, starting with a cable car connecting Mleeta to the nearby hill of Sojud, as well as a hotel, restaurant, gift shop, shooting club and paintball facility. Hezbollah is not alone in promoting resistance tourism in Lebanon — the Iranian government and the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism have also been active in encouraging its development.
On a hill overlooking the Blue Line in the town of Maroun al-Ras, near Bint Jbeil, the Iranian government recently donated a $1.5 million public park. Since opening in May, the park has drawn thousands of domestic tourists to picnic in its landscaped gardens while looking down over Israel. The park has also given the Bint Jbeil area a chance to show off its massive reconstruction since the devastation of the 2006 war.
Tourism minister Abboud — part of the Lebanese opposition — has thus far embraced the phenomenon of resistance tourism, saying: “I see the spirit of resistance [in the south]… defiance is part of our makeup, so I feel that there is a huge potential for tourism there.”
Abboud says he sees this niche tourism sector as a major draw for Arab visitors, to allow them to see for themselves the areas where Hezbollah has battled Israel. Beyond this, he also views resistance tourism as a key weapon to counter Israeli propaganda, by showing international visitors the other side of the story. In a push to win the ideological battle, Abboud says he is even campaigning for the law that bans travelers who have an Israeli stamp in their passport from entering Lebanon to be scrapped, so that more visitors will be able to come and see what occurs in the country firsthand.
Eco-Tourism, Blue Line Style
Khalil Abdullah says that he is building a paradise — along a de-mined strip of land beneath a hill where Israeli military patrols pass by several times a day, and just meters from the United Nations-mandated Blue Line that divides Lebanon from its southern neighbor.
When it opens in September, Abdullah’s Wazzani Fortress resort will be a four or five star eco-lodge, according to its developers, replete with swimming pools, world-class cuisine served to diners sitting along — and even in — the pristine Wazzani River, and chalets with panoramic views of Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
While some might call the development risky given its precarious location on what is widely regarded as one of the world’s more volatile borders, the developers of the $3 million project do not seem worried and have not even taken out an insurance policy on the resort. “It’s not risky because the goal of this project is to make peace — to make tourism, not war,” says Youssef Hamze, the engineer for the resort.
Abdullah, who made his fortune in construction over the course of more than three decades in the Ivory Coast, went into business with his sister — businesswoman Zahra Abdullah — and Mahmoud Hamdan, a supplier of construction materials, and began building the resort on land that had been passed down through the Abdullah family.
“Drinking people, religious people, Lebanese, Arabs, Americans — this is for all kinds of people,” says Hamze as he motioned to the still-unfinished “African-style” bar in the center of the project, which is flanked on one side by small buildings resembling both a mosque and a church. If the initial part of the resort that is currently under construction is a success, the developers have plans for a $4 million expansion, including an additional hotel on a hill rising up behind the river, a conference center and a rotating restaurant.
In the meantime, it will be confined to 18 chalets, slated to be priced at $50 per night. Hamze says that the resort has already received many inquiries about rooms and to host weddings, an interest he credits to the widespread international media attention they have received thus far. Able to seat 1,200 diners at once, it seems that the Wazzani Fortress will look to event hosting for day-trippers for much of its initial business.
The Wazzani Fortress also looks to lead the way for eco-tourism in Lebanon and is hoping to power the resort through waterwheels placed in the river. The project, says Hamze, has made Abdullah a “revolutionary leader” in tourism development in Lebanon’s deep south.
Will they come?
While Southern Lebanon might be on the right track to attract domestic tourism, it is going to take a bit of work to gain the patronage of foreign tourists and their well-padded wallets. Before busloads of international visitors begin arriving in the south, the area will need to shake its reputation in the eyes of many as a war-torn and conflict-prone region — especially if it hopes to attract Western tourists, whose countries warn against traveling there.
The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises its citizens against “all but essential travel to south of the Litani” and the US State Department — while strongly advising against all travel by American citizens to Lebanon — further underscores the danger of travel to the south due to the strong presence of Hezbollah and “other extremist groups” in the area.
Despite such warnings, the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism and those investing in southern tourism downplay the claims of danger.
“I feel that New York is a much more dangerous place than southern Lebanon,” Abboud says. Yet, claiming a perceived danger to foreign nationals in the south, the Lebanese Ministry of Defense has itself imposed restrictions on non-Lebanese wishing to travel anywhere south of the Litani, except for Tyre and its environs. Foreign visitors must receive permission to travel to the south by visiting the mukhabarat (military intelligence) office in Sidon and applying in person. While this procedure might sound straightforward enough, foreigners are regularly, and seemingly arbitrarily, denied this permission.
“The restriction has to do with the security of tourists,” says Abboud. “In some areas we still have landmines — we want to make sure that the tourists are not in danger.”
Abboud says efforts are underway to ease these restrictions and that the south is currently more accessible to foreign travelers than it was previously. The management of the Wazzani Fortress resort — who are looking to attract a full spectrum of international visitors — says they were liaising with the Lebanese government to ensure that their guests would not encounter problems entering the region.
A way to go
Foreign tourists that do ‘brave’ the trip south and are granted access to the area will find themselves amid some of the most stunning vistas the country has to offer. But equally striking is the disparity between touristic infrastructure in the south, compared to much of the country. Roads are generally in poor condition and signs — where they exist at all — are usually in Arabic, making it easy for foreigners to lose their way. According to Abboud, there are currently only 500 hotel rooms available in Southern Lebanon, with nearly all of these located in Tyre and Sidon.
It remains too soon to see how much more investment will flow into touristic development in the area. While Khalil Abdullah is happy with his investment on the Blue Line, many investors would be loathe to invest in immovable assets in areas likely to be on the frontline of any future conflict with Israel.
