Advocates of rural development allude often to the large number of micro-climates that allow for specialty produce to be grown here easily in a larger range than in most other countries. In a nutshell, Lebanon is a small country of huge variety.
This is true not only for raising fruits and vegetables. Culturally, historically, climatically and in terms of geography, Lebanon has both been blessed with and aggregated a diverse wealth. Some other countries can match this portfolio of riches – but it is no hyperbole to say that not a single other country will do so in such condensed a space and, consequently, in the same intensity. This constitutes Lebanon’s uniqueness, and its selling point.
Said characteristics also define the possibilities and limitations for developing Lebanon’s tourism profile. Even as ventures such as the Sannine Zenith development have the makings to become green-field destinations with their own clientele, such undertakings will not put the country on the same footing as Switzerland or Tyrol and a host of other mountain vacation destinations. Plus, Lebanon has scarcely room to accommodate one mega-sized Alpine recreation development. And while the coast sports an also this year increasing number of attractive resorts, the country on the whole would be hard-pressed to create an image of a beach environment able to rival that of the leading Mediterranean aquatic vacation destinations.
Thus, while mountain and beach resorts have reached improvements in their appeal and quality and may still go much farther in both regards, they appear unsuitable for creating mass destinations and thus define the tourism brand of Lebanon in the way of one or two dominant recreational activities, such as sunbathing on Ibiza, gambling in Vegas or mountain climbing in Nepal.
So what is to do where small size and high density are inescapable parameters in operating the economy? If modern tourism can be regarded as the creation of destinations, the avenues for achieving this here then lie in the utilization of existing natural and cultural resources in their diversity. The question to ponder is whether Lebanon can optimize its offer of diversity and become perceived as a boutique tourism nation.
In modern hospitality, the term boutique was adopted by hotels at the beginning of the 1980s as a mark of new distinction. Where the tiered classifications of hotels by basic criteria had lost their differentiation capacity, fine small hotels since then have resorted to the appellation “boutique” to set themselves apart from both the cheaper and the larger competition. Other avantgarde classifications in the upscale hotel industry segment were lifestyle hotels, design hotels and a whole array of more narrowly defined sub-categories.
While the term boutique hotel comes with a degree of imprecision, three things are essential for a hotel to be accepted as such: a (relatively) small size, a luxurious setting, and superb service. Tied into the concept of travel as an individual experience with addictive qualities, the boutique concept is also often understood to refer to the individual character of each room and the specificity of every hospitality experience as inimitable.
Here Lebanon may have its opening. It fits the ticket of being boutique as a whole: it is small, the overall inclination of its hospitality industry is towards luxury (even while the country’s socio-economic reality is often not), and the culture is one of astounding, welcoming hospitability (even there where service details have not been perfected).
Hospitality and tourism experts are in agreement that the country moreover has an underused collection of niche attractions. The aspects are there and can be easily accessed in their entire variety: besides beach and mountain, immersion in rural life, cultural discovery, ecological adventure, religious exploration, and wellness travel have untapped potentials, just as do shopping and nightlife, business and conferencing travel.
Whereas Lebanon is still far from optimizing those niches, one notable effort to market Lebanon’s diversity of rural, nature, culinary and heritage destinations saw a beginning last year with the Discover Lebanon program, an initiative funded by USAID and carried out by international consultants SRI with support from the ministry of tourism. According to SRI director Jim Billings, the project has sustained its momentum well, despite a slowdown in the spring as part of the collective national shock of the Hariri assassination and subsequent events.
Combining new and often innovative tour offerings from several specialized operators into a handy catalogue, Discover Lebanon is this summer in its third season. Billings, who says that tourism is one of the few possibilities for economic growth in rural Lebanon, anticipates that the program will receive continued funding after the expiration of the current grant in November of this year.
The program has been devised under a long-term approach, meaning that its first aims were to entice citizens and residents of Lebanon to attractions of the country that were practically unknown to them. In the course of evolving further, the now ongoing formation and intensification of operator capacities and the creation of locations and activities could very well lead to formulating a new appeal for Lebanon as target offering a multi-faceted bouquet of highly diverse vacation options in a uniquely intimate space.
The idea of shaping an entire new destination identity here – thus far, no country seems to have ever occupied the “boutique tourism nation” niche and label – might be further supported by the fact some hotels and resort enterprises here have already succeeded in establishing their individual destination niches. Examples for ventures that set themselves apart range from the Moevenpick Resort on Beirut’s Raouche coastline and the city’s successful boutique hotels to some of the ski and sports resorts, with an equal or larger number of such ventures giving the impression that they also could achieve such status.
The range of potentials continues further into both commercial and cultural attractions. Shopping and nightlife and urban experiences have all been proven as tourism niches but, with the possible exception of the clubbing and nightlife scene scoring major points in attracting many regional visitors to Lebanon, are all much more potential than exploited today. As special example for the untapped diversity of Lebanon as international destination can serve that the country has strong appeal in the opposing realms of nightlife and religious tourism.
With communities representing the two large branches of Islam, several Christian confessions and the Druze faith, Lebanon offers a natural setting to attract both pilgrims and persons who travel to learn about the world’s many-colored religious traditions.
Various communities in Lebanon have increased efforts to promote religious tourism and offer visitors in convents and retreat centers alternative accommodations to the country’s hotels. Thanks to an active dialogue culture among representatives of the country’s faiths, inter-religious youth encounters and summer camps have been established. Advocates of Lebanon’s potential for spiritual tourism do point to growth in the numbers of people who journey to study religions at their historic roots. The ministry of tourism seeks to promote it and some among the active tourism developers emphasize the potential of religious tourism and plan to incorporate it into projects.
Within the various approaches to being a boutique location or lifestyle destination, an all-important factor is that the visitor demands a unique experience of genuine hospitality. The amazing fact about Lebanon is that with all its shortcomings in tourism infrastructure, damages from wrong planning, absent planning, incompetence, sleuth and corruption in public domain and environmental degradation, pollution, insane construction on account of big and small private sector players, is that the country has not only the small size and high diversity but also, despite all the myriad testimonials to sheer ignorance and selfishness, still has the hospitality that could make it a boutique nation.
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Taking it big
The latest reality check on the nation’s prospects for developing a new niche, namely as conference destination, could be provided in the next few years by the Habtoor Grand Hotel Convention Center and Spa, which is in the final stages of completion as this issue of Executive goes to print. The multi-million dollar facilities of the already operating, spanking new convention center are infinitely larger than domestic demand can fill.
Offering 2,300 square meters of luxurious and high-tech event space in the main Emirates Hall alone, the center can comfortably accommodate 3,000 persons in a single setting. The hall is easily among the largest such facilities in a triangle between Algiers, Dubai and Istanbul.
But its real selling point is not mere size. With its combination of top-end event attributes – a ceiling height of 10 meters in the hall, an LCD-projection screen measuring 5.8 by 5.8 meters, simultaneous translation equipment for six languages, and 400 attached hotel rooms and suites provide the hard evidence, not to mention the air of opulence permeating the concept from every chandelier in the hall up through the hotel tower to the (two) 1,100 sqm pent house suites – this event location currently seeks its equal in the entire Middle East, and the Mediterranean.
The Habtoor Grand has aspects that appeal primarily to the local market, such as its extensive spa, and to the leisure visitor who between the two Habtoor properties in Beirut and the Habtoorland theme park in nearby Jamhour could revel here in a self-contained cosmos. “It’s a world of its own,” the group’s Lebanon PR manager, Rita Massaad, is fond of saying.
Mainstay of the enterprise, however, will have to be the conferencing and banqueting business. Massaad could not specify how much of the entire Habtoor investment into the new hotel complex, totaling over $300 million according to earlier reports, went exactly into the convention center. It is self-explanatory that such an investment, where alone the movable dividers in the Emirates Hall cost $1.7 million, has to draw on a large market. Thus the regional promotion of the convention center to major event organizers was begun already in summer of 2004 and the first bookings were taken nine months ago. The coming 12 months will see a campaign to build awareness first among corporate customers in Lebanon and then in the Middle East and Europe, Massaad said.
Besides conferences, trade events and corporate exhibitions, the wedding events market is important for the operation, more specifically the market for oriental dream weddings of the most lavish kind. “Our targets are Arabs and weddings from outside,” said Kamal Sader, director of banqueting and conventions at the Habtoor Grand. The hotel invited important wedding organizers from the region to inspect its facilities and the first large wedding was celebrated in the Emirates Hall last month.
That the convention center is outsized for local needs is one reason why it has to bank on regional business. Even with the Lebanese love for fairytale weddings and gatherings including every last relative, not every nuptial celebration could aspire to assemble the minimum of 450 guests required as guaranteed attendance for staging an event in half of Emirates Hall.
Another factor is the associated price tag for an event, naturally. According to Sader, the absolute bottom range of the Habtoor Grand’s menu selection for either conference or wedding is $50 per person in guaranteed consumption, meaning that for dining and dancing the wedding night away on the full floor of Emirates Hall, one has to calculate some $55,000, bare minimum. Any organization staging an event at the site equally has to allow at least $27,000 per day of conferencing when using only half of the hall. Hotel room accommodations for event participants on top of that do not come cheap at the Habtoor Grand.
Having positioned itself in the global upper class of event hotels, the Habtoor Grand has a clear mandate and sustainability requirement for further elevating Beirut’s status as conferencing address, to a premier location for the entire Middle Eastern and Mediterranean realms. Since the late 90s and starting with the reopening of the Phoenicia, the city’s luxury hotels could record growth in the international conferencing business. This was not in a small part due to the work of the nation’s best-known figure, late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who helped bring the Arab Summit and the Francophonie conference to Lebanon.
However, it cannot be overlooked that the past six, seven years were an uphill battle for attracting conferences to Lebanon. The francophone countries were not the only aspirants for a Beirut meeting to postpone their gathering here, and both political and security obstacles still mar the outlook for bringing substantial events here on what would have to be practically a weekly basis, in order to fill a site such as the Emirates Hall. On the plus side, the Habtoor Grand is a clear indicator how much Lebanon could benefit from a role as Euro-Arab, Middle Eastern and international event platform. With its operation going full force this month, the hotel, convention center, spa, and shopping mall of the complex will provide direct employment and contractual work to over 1,000 women and men.
