Diversifying Lebanon’s tourism

Executive spoke with Pierre Achkar, president of the Lebanese Federation for Tourism Industries and the Lebanese Hotel Association, who says the tourism industry has learned the hard way the dangers of relying on one market. Although no single market can replace the Gulf tourists, he says, the tourism sector is developing alternative markets and new revenue streams to try and make up for the decreasing number of visitors from the Gulf. E   Lebanon’s tourism industry has been largely reliant on tourists from the Gulf. Was that still the case in 2017? For the past 50 years, Lebanon has been reliant on the Gulf market for tourism. And this is normal, whether in Lebanon, Europe, or America: It’s called proximal tourism. France can’t have its touristic boom if its neighbors, Germany and Italy, boycott it, for example. This doesn’t mean that we in Lebanon aren’t developing other markets such as