Since the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, the Lebanese tourism industry has fallen victim to one crisis after the other. This year, as feuding political factions struck a fragile peace in Doha, Qatar, the industry recovered some of its former luster, with Arab tourists and expats flocking equally from East and West. As the summer approached, market players in the tourism industry kept their fingers crossed, hoping for a good summer season to beef up their fragile balance sheets in a country where Arabs visitors usually represent about half of hotel reservations. Tourist figures have drastically changed since 1974, the last year before the Lebanese Civil War. That year, 500,000 Europeans and 900,000 Arabs visited Lebanon and the tourism industry accounted for 19.4 % of the national GDP. “Ever since the end of the war in 1990, Lebanon has not been able to reclaim its former status
