It was a positive, not to mention mildly surprising sight late last month, when workers descended upon Beirut’s downtown pedestrian area and installed dividers to finally separate the outdoor seating areas of cafes and restaurants from the public space reserved for pedestrians and emergency vehicles. Positive because for the past four years, ever since the downtown started to take off as recreational and tourism attraction, each year had been worse than the previous in terms of the ruthless encroaching on vital public areas. Surprising, because some 15 months ago, top officials in the Beirut administration had stated emphatically that the barriers would be installed before the 2004 summer tourism season. But nothing happened.
Instead of moving quickly towards implementing measures that were recognized as clear necessities, Maarad, the area most affected, became embroiled in the matter of the walkway overlooking the Roman ruins. Here it seemed that final construction works requiring only a few days were not carried out because obstinate private sector players refused to commit themselves to obeying rules as demanded by the administration (until the heady days of the spring awakening, a typically Lebanese solution saw the walkway area used for accommodating restaurant guests).
It is almost needless to say that the officials, however adamant in decrying the deterioration of the urban recreation quality of Maarad and adjacent areas, refused to speak on the record in spring of 2004 and thus could not be held accountable for not acting on what clearly needed to be done. In the meantime, some businesses continued to reap profits from the chaos in the downtown while, more honest operators struggled.
So it seemed that the notion of bringing administrative leadership to bear so that the public and private sectors cold sing from the same sheet was fanciful. Over the past three years, the ablest demonstration of successful cooperation that has seen actual application of policies have occurred (ironically, given the government’s puny financial muscle) in the area of supporting tourism projects through the activities of IDAL, subsidized loans and the Kafalat scheme. (see box on page xx)
And so, the most unguarded secret relating to tourism development in Lebanon is the dichotomy between the need for public sector policies and the absence of such policies. Although not allowing to be quoted on it, stakeholders from the private but also from within the public sector itself, talk regularly and extensively about the fact that the country is lacking a tourism strategy and plan for infrastructure creation, development and management of tourism resources.
One set of issues is the implementation of everyday operational standards in the tourism industry. For instance, incredibly overdue are measures to tax, or otherwise reign in, those beach resort operations that were built sans permit during the war years and which illegally exploit the coastal public realm. At the same time, practical ways for developing public beaches and ridding the Lebanese coast of its untreated garbage mountains and inflows of liquid waste, are not to be found.
The restaurant trade, too, is yet to be effectively supervised. While it must be emphasized that as a rule, the better restaurants and hospitality enterprises of Beirut as well as many establishments in the provinces offer memorable experiences of cuisine and hospitality in general compliance with applicable regulations, a guest could last month still sit down at a downtown café or budget eatery and be served not only items that he never ordered (a fruit platter or a 1.5 liter bottle of water for one) but also a check where VAT was liberally added at the bottom of the bill – even as the menu stated specifically that the Value Added Tax was, as mandated by law, was already included in the price of every individual item.
It is astonishing that such an unlawful practice as “boosting” a bill by 25% should happen under the eyes of the authorities, but the same can be said about the lax implementation of existing standards of waste handling, hygiene and environmental behavior of restaurants, and the lack of adherence to building codes and requirements.
On the second and larger front of tourism development, coordination between the ministries involved in building tourism infrastructure is largely amiss, while the ministry of tourism continues to operate under budget conditions that force it to rely on the goodwill of private sector partners in order to embark on all initiatives. Besides the ongoing planning and coordination malaise that had been pronounced further by the national political crises of the past nine months, in he longer-term, Lebanon also lacks a national tourism development strategy concept of private sector initiatives through a clear set of selfless priorities.
How important policy making in tourism is for the evolution of leisure travel worldwide is illustrated by the World Tourism Organization’s global Code of Ethics in tourism. Formulated as guidelines to tourism stakeholders around the world, the code was adopted four years ago by the UN’s Economic and Social Council and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in late 2001. A World Committee on Tourism Ethics was instituted last year and in May 2005 conducted its first meeting actually examining specific complaints over violations against the code.
As it stands today, the code is an unwieldy document seeking to address major policy issues for sector stakeholders in wordy phrases under headlines reaching from “tourism’s contribution to mutual understanding and respect between peoples and societies” and being a “vehicle for individual and collective fulfillment”, to the rights of tourism entrepreneurs and employees and the obligations of tourists in visiting foreign countries. However, as a symptom of the growing alertness to global standards of behavior in the tourism culture, the efforts of the WTO underscore that governments have to take proactive roles in setting policies for tourism and respecting the huge economic importance of tourism in their politics.
In the Middle East, the latter recognition is a matter of its own urgency, and delicacy. Here, it is not only the de-facto instability in regional security but also the pro-forma war and state of non-peace that impedes tourism growth. As travel between Lebanon and Israel is officially neither permitted, directly nor indirectly, a very significant potential for international package tours to the historic and religious sites in the Near East remains blocked on political grounds.
This serves to remind that tourism is a key development issue in context of the greater Palestinian crisis. The tourism industry has been one of the few truly bright spots in development of the Palestinian economy until the outbreak of the second intifada. Studies have shown that the Palestinian tourism trade virtually crashed and suffered tremendous losses from the unrest following Ariel Sharon’s “visit” to the temple mount. Sadly ironic, researchers even found that Palestinian owners of tourism ventures in East Jerusalem faced the danger of losing their properties to Israeli banks during the crisis, because of defaulting loans. Only in the last year, first modest steps towards a recovery of, mostly religious, tourism brought some relief to parts of the Palestinian economy.
In purely economic terms, a resolution of the obstacles to travel of international tourists between Lebanon and its southern neighbor undoubtedly would boost receipts from visitors here. Main target groups for cultural travel to the holy and historic sites of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Sea of Galilee as part of larger Near East package tours would include educated European and Far Eastern visitors with attractive spending behavior.
For Lebanese hospitality enterprises, such tours would also contribute towards improving the seasonal distribution of business, since the main period for visiting the holy Christian sites of Jerusalem is between November and April. Finally, as impoverishment is recognized as one of the main factors for heightening the susceptibility to terrorist action in marginalized populations, the potential of tourism for bringing new economic growth to the Middle East might in the long term provide an not to be underestimated contribution to social stabilization, always on the precondition of increased security and political stability.
There may be no short-term solution for the problem that regional politics and realities have been detrimental to Lebanon’s potential as high performer in hospitality and while domestic policies and politics in tourism and for tourism have been visibly unable to enhance the activity in impressive ways, it may be best to take consolation in tender mercies. While it can take an extra year to implement a policy decision for installing a bunch of decorative dividers in the downtown, sensible public sector measures evidently can still come about; and late is much better than never.
